The strange case of the pasty, sack-suited Senator Craig (R-ID), who was arrested for soliciting sex in the men’s room at the Minneapolis airport, once again puts all of American politics into the political toilet.

Craig’s friends are now condemning him.

The robotic presidential candidate Mitt Romney, calls Craig “disgusting”. What compassion and Christian understanding from this Stepford candidate with the newscaster haircut, banal rhetoric and the apple-pie family.

Then there is Craig announcing: “I am not gay and never have been gay.” Caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he denies liking sweets.

In the old days, the Craig story would have been hushed up immediately. And despite those people who sanctimoniously say that we have now progressed for bringing it out into the open–we have not.

Politics used to be about working to bring good to the greatest number of people. It was a public job, with civic importance. Now we have conservatives, who once believed that privacy was the most important virtue, asking that people behave in private as purely as they might on the public stage.

The right wing is (what else?) harkening back to the Clinton years, and asking why the media is crucifying all conservatives for one man’s sexual indiscretions? Answer: because the G.O.P. wants to legislate love, sex and marriage so that it complies not with the law but the laity.

Senator Craig is a sick man, not because he played footsie in the bathroom stall. He is ill because he towed the lying line that would not allow him to come out and just be who he is. He should resign, get help, and then make millions writing his memoir, “Senator in the Stall.”