Enough time has passed, and all the jokes have been made, but I wanted to ask a question about the basic substance of the law.
You can get arrested for attempting to have sex?
I have never heard any suggestion of an attempt at soliciting prostitution. So let’s assume for arguments sake that he did do all the things claimed in an attempt to get the guy to have sex. So …? Is it the fact that it was homosexual? is it the fact that it was in a bathroom? Is it because it is Minnesota?
It makes sence that asking for sex is wrong in a workplace, or other unequal power relationships, but seems amazing to me the ACLU isn’t up in arms about the whole deal.
I assume most of downtown on Friday and Saturday night are full of people attempting to have sex, and I have to admit that in my younger days I spent some time in Minnesota, and a fair amount of that time was spend in bars trying to find a girl who would have sex with me(we don’t need to go into my success ratio ), Are the cops going to come knocking my door down some day?
He was arrested for engaging in behavior that has, as a matter of observed history, been a prelude to actually having sex in a public place. He wasn’t looking for someone to take to a hotel. He was looking for someone to have sex with right there. And I don’t really know of any political division (city, county, state, whatever) where having sex in public is legal.
I don’t want to go searching for it while I’m at work, but you might want to look for the “Ask the Former Restroom-Sex Afficionado” (or something close to that) thread (just look for threads started by me). It pretty much explains exactly what the Senator Craig’s plan was.
You can get arrested for attempting to have sex in public. I assume that when you were cruising the Minnesota bars, your goal was to first take the girl someplace private, and you didn’t want to do it right there in the bar.
Craig was attempting to get someone to have sex with him inside the bathroom itself.
He was attempting to engage in an illegal activity. It was well established by the police that his behavior was consistent with other solicitations to have sex in the men’s room. The police were aware of the signals, because they had observed the problem and/or collected evidence via interviews with folks who were arrested. They established probable cause and did not entrap him.
Same issue with the Dateline stings–attempting to have sex with a hypothetical underage person is apparently illegal too, even if you never get down to it.
Yes, as was explained at length in the several threads discussing the Dateline sting. As a general proposition, attempting to commit a crime is itself a crime, even if your attempt fails.
That just seems to me like presumption of guilt, and profiling.
Being arrested for behavior for an activity that is an expected prelude to a crime just seems like bullshit and the kind of thing the ACLU is there to prevent.
I have no problem if the activty is ‘probable cause’ and the guy is searched, and if he has underage porographic photos then they are legal evidence.But being arrested for the activity itself?
He never said that for any account I have read. It doesn’t seem obvious to me that a guy tapping shoes and putting his hand under a stall can be read as “looking to have sex right there” with any certainty. I just fundamentally think it is a bullshit law, it can be reasonably be proven dude was looking for sex, but nothing more.
From what I recall, the “crime” was the fact that he put his hand under the adjacent stall and slid his foot under the stall divider. He also, according to the officer, peered through the small opening in the stall door. All three of those are considered invasions of privacy (since you are in a place with your pants down around your ankles), and I think what he ultimately plead to what some sort of disorderly conduct.
I mean, it’s a public restroom, and society has deemed it inappropriate to solicit for sex there, even if you are looking for an encounter elsewhere. It’s not a bar or a singles gathering. A man should be able to relieve himself without being subject to be hit on.
So, I think when you take all of the factors:
This bathroom was known for sexual activity
He used several signals known to mean a desire for sexual activity
He stared into an occupied public restroom stall.
then I think a reasonable jury would see it was disorderly conduct. Maybe not, but he plead to it…
Trust me, as someone who was involved in that sort of thing for years, there was no intention of taking the person he was trying to hook up with somewhere more private than that bathroom. Stall-crawlers just DO NOT DO THAT. Tearoom activity happens in the restroom…you don’t generally take a tearoom trick home. Senator Craig can protest all he wants, but the things he did are ALL tearoom behavior. He may be able to make his protests fly with the general public who don’t know better about the subject, but there isn’t a former tearoom queen in the world who didn’t roll their eyes after hearing the description of Craig’s activity from the cop who busted him and then hearing Craig’s protestations of innocence and the lame toilet paper excuse. There are a million men (at least) in the United States who’ve formulated that excuse “just in case” decades before Craig got caught.
Could someone possibly post some links to the Dateline sting threads here? I can’t seem to find the search function on this board, sorry I’m kinda new.
), Are the cops going to come knocking my door down some day?