The Gist

When "I am Not Gay" means "I am Gay"

We went live to Larry Craig's press briefing yesterday during the show, and talked a about it when it was over. A lot of callers were pointing out that Craig, by saying, "I am not gay" was being careful about his words since he likely rejects gay identity even as he knows he is "homosexual" or is a "man who has had sex with men."

That may be the case but I couldn't help but think back to his 1982 denial in the page scandal. Craig had not even been publicly implicated in that scandal, but before it could happen he sent out a bizarre preemptive denial. (He never was publicly implicated in the end.) In that denial he went on about how "single" people like himself are always the subject of innuendo and how it had to stop (it was shortly after that scandal that Craig got married to his staffer, and got a ready-made family of three children from her previous marriage, whom he adopted).

It was crazy because he was bringing up things that no one had actually said or claimed, clearly pathological because of homophobia, and overwhelmed -- paranoid -- by in his own fears about being found out. And that's what I thought about with the "I am not gay" statement. No one had actually called him "gay" -- the issue here was an arrest, a guilty plea and sex with men in public rest rooms. For him to go right to the "I am not gay" line is an indication that he knows he is indeed very gay, and has been very fearful about it coming out for a very long time.