Posted on 01/16/2008 5:05:44 AM PST by IronKros
ST. PAUL, Minn. - In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.
Craig, of Idaho, is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to let him withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct stemming from a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport.
The ACLU filed a brief Tuesday supporting Craig. It cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago that found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms "have a reasonable expectation of privacy."
That means the state cannot prove Craig was inviting an undercover officer to have sex in public, the ACLU wrote.
The Republican senator was arrested June 11 by an undercover officer who said Craig tapped his feet and swiped his hand under a stall divider in a way that signaled he wanted sex. Craig has denied that, saying his actions were misconstrued.
The ACLU argued that even if Craig was inviting the officer to have sex, his actions wouldn't be illegal.
"The government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to engage in anything other than sexual intimacy that would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom," the ACLU wrote in its brief.
The ACLU also noted that Craig was originally charged with interference with privacy, which it said was an admission by the state that people in the bathroom stall expect privacy.
Craig at one point said he would resign but now says he will finish his term, which ends in January 2009.
LOL When my boys were old enough to go into the mens room by themselves, I would open the door after they went in and loudly announce “If you’re not out of there in 2 minutes, I’m coming in after you! I’ll be waiting right here for you!”.
I bet they were embarrassed. :) But now that they’re adults I think they get why I did that.
He is NOT gay dammit!
>> In an effort to help Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy. <<
Uh, no. In an effort to EXPLOIT Sen. Larry Craig,...
Read about the undercover cop. The guy’s a Nazi. Search around FR for the specific articles.
Dear Ann Landers,
I recently read where having sex in public bathrooms is OK, but I’m worried that I might get arrested for being in the ladies bathroom with my girlfriend or her getting arrested for being with me in the men’s room.
What should we do?
Confused in NC.
There were some posters on the early threads who suggested that Larry Craig was being set up.
That the officer was trying to ‘capitalize’ on scoring such a big hit.
That the officer just wanted to ‘take down’ a politician.
This was at an airport. Mr. Craig was catching a plane.
When being taken into custody, he kept whining about ‘missing his plane’.
Well, AIRPLANES HAVE TOILETS. Wouldn’t that be the smart thing to do? Ensure you get on your plane and use the toilet there.
Instead, Mr. Craig went to the bathroom, which was ‘known’ to be a homo hangout.
Instead of proceeding to a toilet stall and actually ‘using’ it, he wandered back and forth ‘peeping’ into occupied stalls.
DO YOU HAVE an explanation for why he would waste time ‘peeping’?
After finding someone (a total stranger, which is what this encounter was all about.), desirable, he took the stall NEXT to the undercover cop.
(I don’t know about you, but when I use a public toilet, I try to take a stall the farthest away from any occupied stalls that I can.)
Then, Mr. Craig spends more time, waving his hands under the stall partition, and tapping his foot.
I THOUGHT HE HAD TO GO TO THE TOILET.
I would bet my yearly salary that Mr. Craig never even went #1 or #2 or flushed the toilet during this ‘encounter’.
There are female police officers who pose as prostitutes to arrest those who wish to pay for sex.
Does that make them NAZIS as well?
We've got so called upstanding citizens -- adults, dads married to moms, driving around with fake scrotum dangling in front of the kids in the car behind them.
We've got the same folks of supposed maturity and common sense and decency acting like junior high schoolers when school's out -- pasting pictures of little boys with their pricks out pissing on someone else's property, or good name -- also pasted facing the car behind them with utter contempt for anyone else, man, woman, or child.
How edifying! How inspirational! What a fine example!
gnip....w/frab trela
The American Civil Liberties Union makes me sick. They won’t stop till they destroy this country.
From the ACLU? Bahahahahahahaha!!!
Their support for the rights of pervs transcend ideology.
Talk about “potty parity.”
I’m sorry, but restrooms are not for sex.
There restrooms, not SEXrooms. Right??
What is WRONG with the ACLU....
I’m sorry, — but restrooms are not for sex.
They’re restrooms, - not SEXrooms.
Right???
What’s WRONG with the ACLU...
[typo corrected]
Do you have any specifics that would make him a "nazi", or do you just think perverted sex in public facilities is just fine and dandy?
I forget the specifics, but they were posted on FR at the time, including people with no love at all for Sen. Craig. Let me just say this: Hanging around in bathroom stalls looking to be picked up by gay men isn’t exactly the most prestigious duty for a cop, right? Well, he ended up there probably because they couldn’t put him anywhere else. There was one story of his horrible abuse of a man who found himself in an airport with no legal way of riding his bike out.
It sounds like it. If you read this to people in the 1950s, they’d think so.
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