I just heard NPR say that Senator Larry Craig is appealing the judge’s decision that when he pled guilty, he understood what he was doing.

Of course, I wasn’t present to see the actual interaction between Senator Craig and the judge who accepted his plea, but my dad was a judge for most of when I was growing up. I have seen the process.

Judges don’t just sit there and sleepily ask, “Guilty? Good. Next!” and then pound a big rubber stamp “Guilty!” on the paperwork.

Generally what happens is that there is a conversation, back and forth, between the judge and the accused defendant. The judge explains what the person is accused of, makes sure they understand, outlines the potential consequences and their rights, then asks the person how they plea. If the answer is guilty, there are generally further questions to ensure that the person understands what they are doing.

I’m sure some judges are better and clearer at all this explaining business than others.

But I also think that the most obscure trial court judge responsible for handling misdemeanor accusations of disorderly conduct explains things in a way that can generally be understood by anyone with a college education.

Honestly! Senator Craig has been entrusted to understand incredibly complex legislation, the nuanced decisionmaking process of confirmation of Presidential appointees, and the funding of the entire federal government! But he didn’t understand that when he pled guilty that he was admitting his guilt and accepting the consequences?

Puh.Leez.

Apparently he’d rather be thought of as a moron with unbelievably bad judgment regarding the legal system than a man who picks up other men for sex in public bathrooms.

That’s a tough call. Sex in public bathrooms sounds extremely icky, even to those of us who think that 2 (or more, I suppose) consenting adults should be able to do more or less anything they want to do. Whether that’s have sex and never see each other again, or get married and live happily ever after, or somewhere in between.

Here’s what I don’t understand.

Republicans have awesome strategists. And in Congress, they’re known for having much more effective party discipline than the Democrats.

Why on earth have they not forced Larry Craig to resign? His seat is a safe Republican one, they’re not risking it moving into the D column. But they’re giving the the people in the middle of the road something icky to think about , about a high profile Republican, and every single milestone in the legal process is met with fresh headlines, reminding us that either Larry Craig is icky, or an idiot. Or both.

I also don’t know the underlying truth of the matter. I wasn’t, thank God, in that Minneapolis airport bathroom.

However, it strikes me as unlikely that Senator Craig didn’t do what he’s accused of doing: soliciting an undercover police officer for sex in a public bathroom at the airport.

Even young children know that you keep your feet and everything else to yourself in the bathroom stall. A woman might announce that the stall is out of paper and ask for assistance, then wiggle her fingers under the divider to indicate where to hand that paper. But I honestly can’t even imagine that much conversation between men in a public bathroom. Unless there was a hidden agenda.

Aside from the idiocy of pleading guilty and then claiming you didn’t do it and trying to get someone, anyone, in the legal system to let you off the hook, what really bugs me about this whole thing is that Senator Craig has a perfect record of voting against civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans.

Maybe I should have compassion for someone so deeply troubled and conflicted about his sexual feelings for other men that he had to publicly proclaim that people “like that” don’t deserve any legal protections for being “that way.” I do feel badly for people who seem crippled by internalized homophobia.

But I can’t sustain that sympathy for people who choose to stay hostile and closeted, especially when their decisions affect the lives of other people. The cure for internalized homophobia is to come out and have the experience that it isn’t as scary or awful as you thought it was going to be.

Granted, for Senator Craig, it probably is even worse than he thought it would be. But that is ONLY because he was having sex in public restrooms and got caught, then compounded the problem by denying it in a particularly stupid and public manner.

And when you think about it Congressman Barney Frank survived worse. A couple of years after he came out publicly, his boyfriend was accused of running a prostitution ring out of their apartment. Ultimately, Frank was able to clear his name, and his political career has continued to thrive almost 20 years later.

I think this is because Congressman Frank was both honest about who he was, and about what happened and what he knew or didn’t know. Also, unlike Senator Craig, Congressman Frank is a smart guy with pretty good political judgment.

(I’m not ready to write a long post about whether the decision to remove the trans language from ENDA to get it passed was right or wrong. Of course we need to protect our trans brothers and sisters from discrimination — and yet, I also understand the desire to get half a loaf rather than none.)