So, the transcripts of the post arrest interview of Senator Larry Craig have been released. See Transcript of Police Interview of Sen. Larry Craig, CNN.com-Politics (Aug. 30, 2007). The entire tapes transcript is worth a read. They remind us that the promise of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) has still a ways to go. But the most interesting aspect for me was the way in which the solicitation was made and the arrest pursued:
So allow me to be a bit provocative: As the tapes make clear, the state continues to take as its basic premise that same sex solicitation is closer to prostitution and other acts of lewdness, than it is to the casual solicitation of affective (sexual) interest between people of different sexes (and specifically between adult men and women). The state spends little time policing against any but the rudest forms of solicitations of sexual interest between men and women. The state devotes a tremendous amount of energy on vice--both sex for hire (whatever the sex of the participants) and sex between (in this case) men. That conflation ought to trouble us today far more than it did back in the days before Lawrence. Until the expression of sexual desire among anyone but heterosexual couples is uncoupled from the prostitution/lewdness construct, the expression of non conformist sexual desire will remain suspect, irrespective of the availability of the safe harbors" of civil unions and "gay" spaces.
Transcript, supra.DK: Okay Urn, I just wanna start off with a your side of the story, okay. So, a
LC: So I go into the bathroom here as I normally do, I'm a commuter too here.
DK: Okay.
LC: I sit down, urn, to go to the bathroom and ah, you said our feet bumped. I believe they did, ah, because I reached down and scooted over and urn, the next thing I knew, under the bathroom divider comes a card that says Police. Now, urn, (sigh) that's about as far as I can take it, I don't know of anything else. Ah, your foot came toward mine, mine came towards yours, was that natural? I don't know. Did we bump? Yes. I think we did. You said so. I don't disagree with that.
DK: Okay. I don't want to get into a pissing match here.
LC: We're not going to.
So allow me to be a bit provocative: As the tapes make clear, the state continues to take as its basic premise that same sex solicitation is closer to prostitution and other acts of lewdness, than it is to the casual solicitation of affective (sexual) interest between people of different sexes (and specifically between adult men and women). The state spends little time policing against any but the rudest forms of solicitations of sexual interest between men and women. The state devotes a tremendous amount of energy on vice--both sex for hire (whatever the sex of the participants) and sex between (in this case) men. That conflation ought to trouble us today far more than it did back in the days before Lawrence. Until the expression of sexual desire among anyone but heterosexual couples is uncoupled from the prostitution/lewdness construct, the expression of non conformist sexual desire will remain suspect, irrespective of the availability of the safe harbors" of civil unions and "gay" spaces.
Under an agreement entered into between the United States and the European Union, airlines flying passengers from Europe to the United States are now required to share, among other things, data on the passengers' sexual orientation.