Idaho Paper Publishes Four Accounts Of Gay Sex with Senator Larry Craig

After months of investigation, today the Idaho Statesman published the stories of four gay men who describe their sexual encounters with Senator Larry Craig. The paper's web version of the story includes graphic audio clips from the four men. Two of them, Mike Jones and David Phillips, have previously told their stories on blogs (here and on Wonkette.)

From the Statesman story:

David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.

Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can't be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig's guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.

They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig's denials, including his famous statement, "I am not gay, I never have been gay." Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.

David Phillips is a 42-year-old information technology consultant in Washington, D.C., who says Craig picked him up at a gay club in 1986 and that they subsequently had sex.

Mike Jones is a former prostitute who told the world he had sex with the Rev. Ted Haggard last year. The former Colorado Springs evangelist at first denied it but eventually confessed. Jones says Craig paid him for sex in late 2004 or early 2005.

Greg Ruth was a 24-year-old college Republican in 1981 when he says he was hit on by Craig at a Republican meeting in Coeur d'Alene.

Tom Russell, now 48, is a former Nampa resident who lives in Utah. Russell said his encounter with Craig occurred at Bogus Basin in the early 1980s.

A fifth gay man, who is from Boise but who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, offered a recent and telling account: He was in a men's restroom at Denver International Airport in September 2006 when the man in the next stall moved his hand slowly, palm up, under the divider. Alarmed, the man said he waited outside the restroom and then identified the man in the adjoining stall as Craig, whom he had met in Idaho.

As the story states, there is no smoking glory hole here. No voice mails, no emails, no photographs. But I quite glad that the Statesman felt confident enough in their sources and the corroboration of Craig's travel records to put these mens' stories on the record, particularly Mike Jones'. Now let's see what the MSM does with this on Monday.
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Poofter Rolls On

Pam Spaulding reports that the Virginia DMV has relented and will allow one-time Larry Craig trick David Phillips to keep his "POOFTER" vanity plate.

Phillips: "This morning the Virginia DMV notified me by phone that I can keep my POOFTER plates. This after I returned directly to the head of the DMV the generic plates supplied with their hate letter, along with correspondence indicating my dedication to my First Amendment rights to self-identify in terms that meets no reasonable test for obscenity. I look forward to receiving the DMV's written apology for this incident."

The Case Of The Poofter Plate

David Phillips, whom you may recall for telling the world about his scatified encounter with Larry Craig, is in the news again. Phillips has been told by the Virginia DMV that he must surrender his POOFTER vanity plate.

For 11 years, over nearly 200,000 miles, with the blessing of the state of Virginia, David Phillips has driven his Tracker with the "POOFTER" license plate, and nobody has complained -- not even when he parked at the British Embassy, where everybody knows "poofter" is British slang for a gay man.

"It's always a rolling good laugh for them," says Phillips, who is gay and chose his tags' message because "it's just an amusing word that I self-identify with."

The commonwealth of Virginia is not amused. It gave Phillips his vanity plates in error, Carolyn Easley, coordinator of the special license plates office, wrote in a recent letter. "You may have grown fond of your personalized plates," but they are "socially, racially or ethnically offensive or disparaging" and "you must return them." There was no explanation for why it took Virginia 11 years to figure out what "poofter" means.

I knew a gay guy in Fort Lauderdale whose Jeep sported "NO FISH" plates, something a feminist or two probably had a problem with, had they known what he meant. So few Americans know what "poofter" means, I can see why it took Virginia so long to object. Still, knowing that the word is insulting overseas would make me think twice about using it on a license plate. Phillips plans on fighting for his POOFTER plate. What do you think? How far can we go with even a self-mocking plate?