Anonymous Gay Men of Minneapolis, Show Yourselves!

It would be tragic for Larry Craig if his entire political career turned out to be a massive overcompensation, a convoluted psychological defense against powerful, shameful feelings of lust he has, we come to find, felt for other males since his youth.

It would be more than tragic. A person who spends a career battling against the civil rights of gays while engaging in promiscuous gay sex in secret is worse than a hypocrite - he is a danger to the community. In the case of a United States Senator, it might be argued without much trouble that he is a danger to national security.

For the record, I don't think Sen. Craig is a hypocrite. He'd have to be far healthier psychologically to be capable of plain hypocrisy. What Sen. Craig is is tortured. He is tortured by a lifetime of shame and self-loathing and an elaborate career spent projecting his own unacceptable feelings onto others, whom he can then insult and cast out. A career spent methodically destroying the parts of himself that he could not live with - and a whole lot of other people's lives, too.

A man carrying this much shame and desperation for so many years should not be allowed near the room when legislation is being written that others have to live by. A guilt-steeped man is a ticking time bomb, especially when praise is heaped upon him year after year for being the very thing he knows deep down he is not. The more he succeeds in politics or business, the guiltier he feels. The more he is unable to suppress his desires, the guiltier he feels. The more men he sins with. The more energy he expends to hide his secret, the guiltier - and more panicked - he feels.

When guilt-ridden people in need of scapegoats band together to project our society's unacceptable traits onto others whom we can then destroy, they are called Republicans. And a Christian, anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-NRA , pro-family Republican is the gold standard, the Republican's Republican.

That many of our current leaders loathe themselves and feel deserving of punishment is terrifying to me. They want us as a nation to feel the same unnameable, inchoate need to suffer. They get enraged when we don't wave the flag and cheer as we destroy ourselves in needless war, and shit ourselves in the eyes of the world.

Republican Group Fantasy, October, 2007: We're all sinners, and we all got to burn.

Now watch and see how a real man takes one for his country.

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So anyway, if Larry Craig had these anonymous sex partners, how come none of them has come forward to collect his cash award from the major media yet?

Soon, I think. Just wait.

It'll be an "I fucked Larry Craig" Christmas. Mark my words.