It was probably inevitable. The Idaho Statesman, the newspaper that originally broke the story of Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest in an airport restroom for soliciting an undercover cop, has published the names of four gay men who claim to have had sex with Craig, been solicited by him or experienced “unusual attention” from Mr. Wide Stance.
David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.
Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can’t be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.
They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig’s denials, including his famous statement, “I am not gay, I never have been gay.” Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.
OK, so there’s no video, photos or other hard evidence that backs up what the four men say. However, the Statesman has investigated and reports that there’s nothing to disprove what the men say, either:
But the Statesman’s investigation, which included reviews of travel and property records and background checks on all five men, found nothing to disprove the five new accounts. The men offer telling and sometimes similar details about what happened, or the senator’s travel records place him in the city where sex is alleged to have occurred, or his accusers told credible witnesses at the time of the incident.
Needless to say, neither Larry the Love Machine nor his spokespeople would speak to the Statesman. However, a couple of concerned Idahoans did leave comments on the story. Here are the musings of someone who calls itself “PaulTheWasherWoman”:
I still can’t understand why gay men can’t be senators. Just what is it about this all makes it so he can’t continue. Nothing, that’s what. All this does is show the rest of the country that Idaho is either mormon controlled or neo-nazi controlled or whatever. In any case it completely sucks for our image as a state.
‘Nuff said.
