My 30 seconds of fame!
Jan. 16th, 2008 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athenaltenaIn other news (har har), I ended up on the radio today. ^_^
While I was at work listening to Lazer 99.3 they started talking about how the ACLU has taken up the case of Larry Craig. For those of not from the US, he's a very conservative Republican from Minnesota who was caught "toe tapping" or essentially soliciting for sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom and got caught by an undercover cop. The ACLU is essentially citing a 38 year old court decision that says that you have a right to privacy in a bathroom stall no matter what you're doing, and that the cop violated Craig's rights by arresting him. I'm proud of the ACLU for sticking up for him, even though he's vehemently against them. Sort of a "I may not like what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it" situation, and I think this is the type of thing we need in this country instead of this divisive bipartisan crap.
But that aside, as they were talking about this and how they charged him for doing that in a public place, I remembered a bathroom area called the "Companion Care" room in the Washington DC airport. The idea is that if you're traveling with an elderly person or a small child you can take them there and take care of them, but of course people use it for a quickie. In DC I actually saw a woman drag a guy who had just gotten off of a plane into one of those, and it was pretty obvious what was going on there. So therefore the airports put up with it, so going after Craig for essentially doing the same thing was overstepping their boundaries, since he wasn't paying cash or anything like that and it was between two consenting adults in what has legally been ruled a private space.
Now granted, I don't like what Craig did at all and the way he's been handling it (IE I think he should have stepped down right from the beginning instead of reneging on his promise and staying in office), but living in the closet is hard, and even though he's a conservative Republican who voted against many civil rights issues, the fact is that he probably did have his rights violated, and I don't see how we (gay people) can expect him to stick up for us if we won't stick up for him. And the fact is that there's a history of gay men being unfairly targeted for stuff like this, since I think it's probably the case that if this had been a man and a woman (or even two women) this wouldn't have been nearly as big an issue.
But anyway, I called the radio station and told them about the "Companion Care" rooms, and she got a kick out of that. And yes, my first thought when they played my call around 10 minutes later was "My God. I really sound like that?" I didn't identify myself fully, but if anyone did recognize me by my voice that's OK. But yay, I got my 30 seconds of fame. ^_^
While I was at work listening to Lazer 99.3 they started talking about how the ACLU has taken up the case of Larry Craig. For those of not from the US, he's a very conservative Republican from Minnesota who was caught "toe tapping" or essentially soliciting for sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom and got caught by an undercover cop. The ACLU is essentially citing a 38 year old court decision that says that you have a right to privacy in a bathroom stall no matter what you're doing, and that the cop violated Craig's rights by arresting him. I'm proud of the ACLU for sticking up for him, even though he's vehemently against them. Sort of a "I may not like what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it" situation, and I think this is the type of thing we need in this country instead of this divisive bipartisan crap.
But that aside, as they were talking about this and how they charged him for doing that in a public place, I remembered a bathroom area called the "Companion Care" room in the Washington DC airport. The idea is that if you're traveling with an elderly person or a small child you can take them there and take care of them, but of course people use it for a quickie. In DC I actually saw a woman drag a guy who had just gotten off of a plane into one of those, and it was pretty obvious what was going on there. So therefore the airports put up with it, so going after Craig for essentially doing the same thing was overstepping their boundaries, since he wasn't paying cash or anything like that and it was between two consenting adults in what has legally been ruled a private space.
Now granted, I don't like what Craig did at all and the way he's been handling it (IE I think he should have stepped down right from the beginning instead of reneging on his promise and staying in office), but living in the closet is hard, and even though he's a conservative Republican who voted against many civil rights issues, the fact is that he probably did have his rights violated, and I don't see how we (gay people) can expect him to stick up for us if we won't stick up for him. And the fact is that there's a history of gay men being unfairly targeted for stuff like this, since I think it's probably the case that if this had been a man and a woman (or even two women) this wouldn't have been nearly as big an issue.
But anyway, I called the radio station and told them about the "Companion Care" rooms, and she got a kick out of that. And yes, my first thought when they played my call around 10 minutes later was "My God. I really sound like that?" I didn't identify myself fully, but if anyone did recognize me by my voice that's OK. But yay, I got my 30 seconds of fame. ^_^
