Bloody brilliance!

Just finished reading the first draft of my friend, Sue Boulton's novel, Hand of Glory. Brilliant. Just bloody brilliant. Even in rough draft it's by far one of the best books I've read this year. If this does not get picked up for publication then the publishing industry is collectively braindead. (Well, let's face it, a lot of people suspect the braindead bit already).

Senator Craig Rebuffed

I do not, as a general rule, use this blog to discuss any personal matters, or to hold forth on politics or society in general. I’m breaking that rule for a moment.

Senator Larry Craig infamously should learn to keep to himself in any public restroom. His attempt to have his (insanely misguided) plea of guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct has been rejected. But this is not really about the republican senator, nor his hypocrisy, nor his self-deceptions and illusions, nor whether or not Mr. Craig should resign his senatorial seat; this is about America’s paranoid homophobia.

Assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that Mr. Craig did everything with which the arresting officer charged him. Assume that he entered a particular toilet stall in a particular men’s restroom in a Minnesota airport. Assume that he touched the officer’s foot, in the next stall, with his foot (both men were apparently wearing shoes at the point of this conduct). Assume that Mr. Craig then made a particular hand signal below the level of stall divider with, assuming, the intent to arrange for asexual encounter with the officer.

Assume all of that, and now tell me what crime Senator Craig committed. Disorderly conduct? The Minnesota criminal code defines the offense of disorderly conduct as:

609.72 DISORDERLY CONDUCT.
Subdivision 1. Crime. Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:
(1) Engages in brawling or fighting; or
(2) Disturbs an assembly or meeting, not unlawful in its character; or
(3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

This statute establishes three elements of disorderly conduct: 1) committing one of the three enumerated conducts; 2) knowing or having reason to know that it will alarm, anger, et cetera; 3) others. Note, especially that it does not matter whether the offending conduct is committed in a public or private space. Note that the offense is inherently subjective in the sense that it devolves upon the offense that might be taken by “others”. Note, finally, that the “others” do not have to actually be offended, alarmed, angered or et cetera.

So, does Mr. Craig’s restroom peccadilloes amount to a violation of Section 609.72? The first two enumerated categories of conduct do not apply. As far as we know Craig and the officer exchanged no words prior to the arrest. By any stretch of the imagination Craig’s conduct cannot be viewed as boisterous or noisy. The offense, therefore, depends on whether touching another person’s foot and making a peculiar hand gesture constitute “offensive, obscene [or] abusive” conduct.

Certainly an unintentional touching of another’s foot by your foot is not explicitly offensive. Have you never accidentally stepped on someone’s foot? A shod foot briefly making light contact with another foot is patently not obscene or abusive. An apology may be warranted, but not a criminal prosecution. Ever make any odd, but innocuous gestures? I do, and there is no way it can constitute offense, obscenity or abuse.

Make no mistake, what is being punished here is the presumed intent of one man to have sex with another man. Mere intent to have sex with another person is offensive, obscene and abusive in the great state of Minnesota. Keep in mind, now, that there was no actually sexual conduct of any kind, there was no contact with any genitalia, no hug, no squeeze, no leer or ogle or come hither look. Senator Craig was arrested and prosecuted for having the intent to have sex.

Would the arrest and prosecution have gone forward if the target of Mr. Craig’s lascivious intent had been a woman instead of a man? Remove the “action” to the airport bar, let Craig hit on a woman, let there be a furtive touch and non-verbal signal. Whatever his intent, would anyone want to charge the senator with a crime?

Instead of rejecting Senator Craig’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea, which strictly on its own merits was doomed to failure, the reviewing court should have dismissed all charges, ordered the record of the arrest expunged, and censured the trial judge, the prosecutor, the arresting officer and any supervising officer. The mere intent to have sex cannot constitute disorderly conduct, and neither can a few clumsy “pick up” lines. It is not just the job, but the duty of our law enforcement and judicial officers to ensure that arrests, prosecutions and convictions must be supported by the law.

Republican, Democrat, Independent or apolitical, this is not about politics. This is not about whether yet another politician should or should resign. This is about the paranoid persecution of gay men in this supposedly civilized country.

Online Literature

In keeping with my interest in free, online literature (and speaking of Blue Moose Press), I have been checking out a young adult book, Rowan of the Wood by Christine and Ethan Rose. Targeted for readers from, oh about eight to twelve or thirteen, Rowan is the story of ten-year old orphan Cullen Knight. Oppressed by his foster parents, and persecuted by his much larger foster brother, Cullen retreats into the world of reading fantasy to cope; until, that is, the fantasy finds him in the form of a magic wand Cullen uncovers in a redwood forest. Unknowingly, Cullen releases the wizard Rowan, trapped inside the wand for fourteen centuries, and now Cullen's fate is bound to that of the legendary Green Man.

Frankly, I had some initial difficulty with the orphan boy-hero suffering at the hands of nasty foster parents, and a bullying foster-brother, who finds himself suddenly possessed of magical powers. I mean, it's been done, and recently. Though I did come to enjoy the story of Cullen and Rowan, in some ways I never did get entirely over that initial discomfort. Still, this is a young adult book, and I suppose that readers of that year are perhaps a bit more tolerant of such recycling. (Indeed, the orphan-in-peril trope is hardly a recent invention).

That aside, Rowan could have used the services of an experienced YA editor, as the prose went to purple far too frequently, and there were a number of long, descriptive passages where a few words could have sufficed. There were far too many instances of 'telling, and not showing'. As a young adult novel, however, I could not honestly expect the narrative sophistication and complex structure that I would look for in an adult book.

To the kids the main thing is the story, I believe, and Rowan has a good one. Cullen bonds with Rowan, in some ways literally, as the strong, caring adult that he craves. That Cullen and Rowan must face, together, a truth that may be too painful to bear seems to me the lynchpin of the story. This melding of the worlds of the child and the adult strikes me as quite inventive and sets this book apart from its predecessors in the 'orphan hero' canon.

Rowan is scheduled for release in the Spring of 2008, but there is a preview copy available online at the Blue Moose Press website.

Boxes for the Poor

It seems that my story, Boxes for the Poor, is currently appearing in the Blue Moose Press Newsletter: Follow this Link