Craig case raises serious questions

It is plainly a distasteful subject for most people to discuss the circumstances of Larry Craig's resignation from the U.S. Senate.

The notion that Craig was trying to arrange a tryst in a men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport would be ugly enough even if Craig hadn't been a senator from Idaho since 1991 and a member of Congress since 1981.

The shame of the arrest alone might have forced Craig out of office in any case, and Craig's decision to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct may have sealed his doom.

But one thing we perhaps ought to ask ourselves in the wake of Craig's arrest, guilty plea and resignation is just what exactly we want our police doing to protect us, and whether or not we know enough to condemn Larry Craig for what happened in the airport.

Here's what we know for sure:

1) Craig entered a restroom in the airport while carrying a suitcase.

2) He waited outside the bathroom stalls for up to two minutes, and apparently looked through the crack in a stall and saw someone on the inside (who turned out to be an undercover cop).

3) When the stall next to the policeman opened up, Craig entered it and brought his suitcase inside with him.

4) Craig positioned his suitcase at the front of the stall, sat on the toilet, and tapped his foot.

5) His foot touched the foot of the undercover policeman.

6) His hand apparently slid along the bottom of the divider between the two stalls.

7) He was arrested.

If Craig in fact was soliciting some kind of sex act in the airport bathroom, we are as disgusted as anyone. But we are also made more than a little queasy by the fact that Craig didn't really do anything that most of us would consider criminal. What exactly was the disorderly conduct?

The policeman said he recognized Craig's behavior as a "code" that men use to solicit sex from other men. Maybe so. But tapping your foot is not criminal. Neither is looking toward the stalls while you wait for one to open. So far as we know, even touching the bottom of a bathroom stall divider is not illegal, as unsanitary as it is. As for placing your suitcase at the front of the stall, that is standard behavior for anyone, gay or not, criminal or not. Where else are you supposed to put it?

We are not excusing criminal behavior, and in fact we hope police do make sure that public restrooms remain safe and secure. But that doesn't mean arresting people based on where their luggage goes. If there was indeed some intention on the part of Larry Craig to engage in illicit behavior, the police should have waited until he did so, or made some actual proposition, before arresting him.

Chances are that if the Minneapolis airport were to station a uniformed policeman OUTSIDE the stalls in every airport bathroom, they would do much more to protect the public welfare than they can ever accomplish by sending officers into the stalls patiently waiting for someone to tap his feet.