Jerry Herman, the legendary and openly gay composer-lyricist wrote these prescient lyrics for Mack and Mable three decades ago:

Today, anyone with at TV or a toilet knows that Senator Larry "the commode" Craig took those frothy little lyrics into a bathroom stall, tapped some signals to the stall next door and turned them around into "Tap your troubles to you." It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.

The sky full of crap belongs in his lap. For indeed, his tap was heard around the country and brought America into his stall. (Along with the entire elephant…it’s getting pretty crowded in there).

I didn’t need to know that the narrowest of minds has the widest of stances. That a man who walks in lock step with the Christian Right excuses himself to "see a man about a horse" and instead taps a morbid Morse code for the purpose of… how do you say it…to fill "a buster." By doing the boot scoot bathroom boogie, he went lower than the down low.

Back on Capitol Hill he made certain we gays know where we stand. With his policies and pretenses, he and his yahoos have effectively marginalized enough self loathing queens into water closets nationwide.

But, Senator, when your self loathing contributes to the gay community’s Technicolor nightmare, you’ve crossed the line a lot further than the imaginary one in that men’s room. While closeted homosexuals are tragic in this day and age, closeted homosexuals who get elected to the Senate and pull on the other side of the rope to prevent us from life liberty and the pursuit of fabulousness are lower than low. So, instead of owning up, you masked again for the media to pronounce that "I am not now, nor have I ever been gay."

Those of us out here in the real world have had to wrestle with all the things you didn’t have the gay guts to face—fear, rejection, job discrimination, self worth, and gay bashing. But —despite your valiant attempts to the contrary on every single issue—we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and looked fear in the mirror and said "I’m a friend of Dorothy’s damn it. I can do this." In the cruel alternate universe, you looked in the mirror and said "I’ve gotta get home to the little wife, and the VFW fundraiser, but, man that stall behind me sure looks promising!" The media has focused on your anti-gay voting record. I’m more interested in the day-to-day places you masquerade as a macho hetero potato tossin’ dude—state fairs and back yard pork pulls—where the homophobic humor in the heartland invariably crops up. I’m sure you’ve hurt our cause in ways both big and small. You liar. Shame on you.

Well, back to Jerry Herman, the Honest Homosexual. He also wrote our anthem…the clarion call you failed to hear, Senator—it’s from La Cage Aux Folles.And just in case your French is as rusty as your principles—don’t flock with us! You don’t deserve to.

You wouldn’t understand "I Am What I Am" but honest open gay citizens sing it proudly and hope for a civil rights miracle—a miracle you’ve done your best to mangle. Senator, you can’t tap to "I Am What I Am." And we all know you love to tap.

So, the only just punishment I can conjure up is HOMO IMMERSION 101—(with REMEDIAL HONESTY as a prerequisite). You come to our Gay Kennedy Compound in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and serve out the rest of your life as our House Boy. You’ll fetch us the New York Times and keep the show tunes and Cher coming. If the liberal paper and openly gay people don’t kill you, the Kennedy name will. But you’ll mix cocktails and you’ll learn tap the right way.

Oh, and one last thing Senator. Before you leave Idaho, please put on a diaper and drive straight through like a wild NASA astro-nut. It’s probably better that you not stop at any men’s rooms along the way.