Everyone remembers Larry Craig right? If not look here:
So what did he do to get arrested?
That is pretty damn vague, I’m seen other articles claiming gait, posture, and whistling can all get you arrested too. Am I the only one wondering If I’m gonna get arrested the next time I go to take a leak while kinda drunk and whistling Lola by the Kinks:dubious:
I remember a guy hanging out by the sinks in a public toilet asking me if I “like to hang out in the sky?” when I asked him WTF he was on about he declined to explain, I figured he was looking to sell or buy drugs. I later found out The Sky was a local gay bar So are cryptic questions arrestable too?
Welcome to Amerika, wher anyone can be arrested for anything, and the pigs may need to come up with a reason after they pull you in.
Putting aside my '60s Radical hat, it’s not that it needs to stand up in court, but you can be detained for any number of vague reasons if the officer feels it is warranted.
If it’s valid to make it illegal to solicit sex in a public restroom, then there has to be some kind of evidence that can form the basis of an arrest that’s less than an explicit invitation. Or else the law itself is unenforceable. That’s how any criminal law works.
I think soliciting sex in toilets is creepy as hell, but if the code is so vague that someone not in the know would miss it totally what is the crime? Hell it seems like even exposure of genitals would be iffy, it is a male restroom after all and trough urinals don’t offer privacy.
If I had been in the stall next to Craig and he tapped his toe and tried to nudge my foot and put his hand under the stall…I probably would have thought he wanted to be passed the toilet paper.
I suppose it falls in the same category as porn - hard to define explicitly, but “I know it when I see it”.
The average straight guy, after an accidental foot touch like that, would draw back and let the other guy have his wide stance if that’s what was needed to pinch off the loaf. Persistent and repeated attempts to make contact, in the absence of encouragement, means either the instigator is remarkably obtuse; or like some guys hitting on girls in the bar, compensate for the lack of appeal with continued excessive zeal.
This, IIRC from the news, was the complaint and the reason for the stake-outs. You know and I know when someone is trying to hard to be your friend in the men’s room. Apparently, they had enough complaints that they felt a stake-out was necessary. They took the evidence of Craig’s persistent behaviour to the judge, and let him decide whether that constituted illegal conduct.
I doubt you’ll be arrested for whistling or just using the urinal; although I have seen some guys who are not shy about showing off. I guess the problem is - what exactly does the law say? Do you have to make advances on someone or a group, or does waving it in circles for all to see and announcing “not just 10, but 10 and a half!” constitute illegal behaviour?
In this case, the point was not that he did any one thing, but that he made a signal that indicated he was looking for gay sex, and then he continued to make additional signals as time went by. One signal would probably not have gotten him arrested; it could have been just a coincidence. But when he started giving multiple different signals that all were signs of an interest in gay sex, the officer had reason to arrest him.
Apparently it is in Minnesota. I mean, communicating this nonverbally got Craig arrested, so why wouldn’t it be an arrestable offence to do the same thing verbally?
As the old joke goes, “anything more than 3 shakes is playing with it…”
The answer is, “it depends”. If you are told “no” and persist, or do it to multiple people in a short space of time, you are being annoying enough that some sort of charge will be forthcoming.
Take it from someone who knows…there are easily recognizable signals for that kind of thing, and every single thing Craig did in that restroom was one. Taken together, in a known area for that sort of thing, they add up to reasonable grounds. I can pretty much guarantee there were a LOT of gay men over the age of roughly 40 who read about the incident, looked at the reported signals, and thought, “Oh, he was definitely looking for a little restroom romance.” It was blatantly obvious from my viewpoint as someone who used to do that stuff in my misspent youth.
It’s a little more than that. Expressing a sexual interest is one thing, because you could be, in that context, inviting the person to come home with you (or asking them to take you home) to engage in the activity in question. This is not in that context…generally, people who are sending signals in public restrooms aren’t looking to find a partner to take home. They’re looking for sex…right now…right here. Which is where the crime centers. Think about this…the incident happened in the Minneapolis airport. If you’re in an airport in the middle of the day, you’re either working, in the middle of traveling, or waiting for someone’s flight to arrive. You’re not going to stop to drive someone from the airport to your house to have a quickie blowjob and then drive them back to the airport. It’s extremely unlikely (to the point of almost being absolute) that nobody sending signals in an airport restroom is trying to get someone to come home with him.
Point being that he didn’t DO anything to anybody else. Communicating a desire shouldn’t be something one can be arreted for, outside of harmful acts.
So it’s illegal to be annoying?
Not sure why I felt like getting involved in this discussion, but I think it amounts to this: The guy didnt’ DO anything to anybody. Arresting somebody for having the desire to do somthing, or even for intending to do something makes me extremely uncomfortable.
And it also smacks of self-righteous cop behavior.
If you are trying to pick someone up of either sex for a private encounter then it is not an offense as long as you are not harassing the unwilling. Doing the same so you can have sex in a public bathroom where others just want to use the facilities will get you arrested. You can’t see the difference?
Doesn’t seem that vague to me. The officer said Craig was firstly lingering outside his stall, “frequently” peeking through the cracks in it. Craig then went into the adjacent stall and started tapping his foot underneath the divider, before physically touching the officer’s foot with his own foot. He then started swiping his hand underneath the divider as well for good measure, with the palm facing upwards towards the officer. And bear in mind this is in a restroom which is clearly renowned as a venue for soliciting sex; hence why there were undercover officers there in the first place.
Now maybe the officer was making up or exaggerating parts of that story, and I’m not commenting on the value of the law against solicitation itself, but if the story is true I’d say that’s about as clear an example of solicitation as you’re likely to get, isn’t it?
It’s a very small distinction that amounts to no difference to me. Sex in a public place is illegal…fine. Nobody touched nobody, from what I gather, except for some minor foot contact.
Of course he plead guilty…he was guilty of acts that are illegal. I realize that was the initial discussion, but I hijacked it a little bit with the point that it’s pretty shaky.
I always wondered what the officer did to prompt Craig’s behavior. Is it common for individuals in this situation to simply walk up to a stall and peek in? Or to repeatedly make gestures under the stall? My thought was that if there was no -come-on in the first place, or not signals from the officer, Craig wouldn’t have been as persistent.
Further, a normal person who isn’t interested is likey to react negatively, are they not? If I’m in the same position as the officer, I’m going to move my foot away…if actions continue, I’m gonna say ‘Dude what the fuck? Stop.’
That the office didn’t resond may have been taken by Craig as tacit approval.
It REALLY sounds like you’re grasping at straws to exonerate Craig. Because the officer didn’t threaten to beat Craig up if he continued, the officer was actually entrapping him? Really? Is the fact that he didn’t wear his special-issue “AIRPORT POLICE”-inscribed jackboots also evidence of entrapment?
And, as someone who really DID used to haunt restrooms looking for sex, let me tell you that YES, we really did walk up to a stall and peek in and repeatedly make gestures. Generally, there would be at least a few repetitions before a lack of apparent interest prompted me to wait for a more promising prospect to come in. Craig was slightly over the line, actually…he was more persistent than the average stall-crawler would consider prudent.
So are cryptic questions arrestable too?