Larry Craig, Barney Frank and the New York Posts “Gay Senator” quiz… Discuss.

And in more Larry Craig news…

Huffington Post blogger Nina Burleigh has a post about how the Republican party, with its factions who thrive on “religious psychobabble and outright bigotry” reaps what it sows when things like the Larry Craig scandal erupt. And she calls out the gay staffers working for homophobic Republicans in D.C. for their complicity in this phenomenon, too.

Gay congressmember Barney Frank has commented that Craig shouldn’t resign. Said Frank: “What he did, it’s hypocritical, but it’s not an abuse of his office in the sense that he was taking money for corrupt votes… I think people should resign when they have clearly done the job in a way that is dishonest.”

All of this Craig frenzy prompted the New York Post to pen an “Are you a gay senator?” quiz, trying to be humorous, but mainly ending up as lame, cliched and possibly just offensive. Which the folks at New York Magazine are getting rather tired of.

And this just in from San Diego… CBS News on Logo’s Jason Bellini has posted a new vlog entry, in which he wonders how the future will look back on the Larry Craig scandal. (It’s part of a series of posts Jason’s doing as sort of a time capsule, called the “2050 Project.”) Check it out!

Will Fred Thompson declare his presidential candidacy today?

The Washington Post’s political blog says yes, probably, if he’s going to declare at all.

Elsewhere on The Trail, the Post notes that the Larry Craig scandal is just the latest step on the path to hell for the GOP.

Read more…

NGLTF’s Matt Foreman points out that Sen. Larry Craig is being investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee for allegedly trying to procure sex with a man, while Sen. David Vitter (also, surprise surprise, a Republican) got off scot-free for admitting he was associated with a female escort service operated by the “D.C. Madam.”

Says Foreman:

“Let’s see — one Republican senator is involved in soliciting sex from a man and the Republican leadership calls for a Senate investigation and yanks the rug from underneath him. Another Republican senator admits to soliciting the services of a female prostitute and there’s not only no investigation but the senator is greeted with a standing ovation by his Republican peers. What explains the starkly different responses? I’d say rank and homophobic hypocrisy.”

Good point.

For those of us (lesbians, for example) who have never solicited/been solicited for bathroom sex, The Washington Post goes into great detail about how it works.

Also, they make the point that bathroom sex may actually be less about being gay and more about being an addict. Interesting. (This, of course, is tied to the Larry “I am NOT GAY” Craig story).

What do you think?

Tucker Carlson recanted–sort of–with a statement this evening, provided to Media Matters:

Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men’s room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room. Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men’s room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.

Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That’s absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn’t angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

Well, Mr. Carlson, I’m not convinced. On the air you said that you grabbed this guy and bashed his head into a wall. And you laughed about it. Now you’re saying you came back 25 minutes later and held him.

So, did you make up the story about bashing his head into the wall just to seem cooler in front of your friends?

So, Tucker Carlson, MSNBC’s resident right-winger, is talking about Larry Craig.And he goes on and on about how solicitations for sex happen in public restrooms and how they have to stop.

And then he says that he himself was approached in a public restroom when he was in college.

Here’s part of the transcript. Note that they are talking about assaulting a gay man and LAUGHING about it:

ABRAMS: Tucker, what did you do, by the way? What did you do when he did that? We got to know.

CARLSON: I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the — you know, and grabbed him, and — and –

ABRAMS: And did what?

CARLSON: Hit him against the stall with his head, actually!

[laughter]

CARLSON: And then the cops came and arrested him. But let me say that I’m the least anti-gay right-winger you’ll ever meet –

[laughter]

So Tucker beat up a gay guy in a bathroom. And then is laughing about it on national television.

Oh, but he’s not anti-gay - as he’ll be the first to tell you.