Republican leaders, fearing election-related consequences over an escalating scandal, were further startled when Craig's office announced his lawyers are asking a Minnesota court to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea stemming from an alleged sexual solicitation in June inside a bathroom stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Gay rights attorneys, meanwhile, have said the flood of news media coverage of Craig's bathroom arrest could draw attention to their longstanding concern about what they consider improper police tactics, including questionable entrapment arrests, associated with crackdowns against sexual solicitation in public places.

"The public has a right not to be exposed to sex in a public place," said Susan Sommer, senior counsel for the gay litigation group Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund.

"Yet there are situations where police use entrapment or make arrests where there is no public sex but someone proposes sex at another, private location," Sommer said. "They shouldn't be in a rush to arrest someone who is just discussing plans for sex with a seemingly willing partner."

Craig has denied he's gay and has insisted an undercover police sergeant who arrested him in the airport bathroom on June 11 misinterpreted his hand and foot movements at the time the officer encountered Craig in an adjacent bathroom stall.

The officer allowed Craig to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct after initially accusing him of a more serious "gross" misdemeanor charge of "interference with privacy."

The latter charge is based on a Minnesota law that says a person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor if he or she "surreptitiously gazes, stares or peeps in a window ... or other place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts ... or clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts."

Chuck Samuelson, an official with the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, said police undercover officers frequently use the law to arrest unsuspecting men who seek to meet other men for sex in public places such as bathrooms.

Samuelson said ACLU attorneys don't believe such arrests are justified in cases like Craig's, where the men involved merely use hand or foot signals and don't engage in sexual acts or lewd conduct.

The sergeant who arrested Craig stated in his arrest report that Craig allegedly peeped into the stall where the officer was sitting, entered an adjacent stall and slid his foot into the officer's stall. The officer stated in his report that Craig did this after Craig tapped his foot a few times on the floor and the officer responded by tapping his own foot.

The officer said Craig then slid his hand along the bottom edge of the wall separating the two stalls -- all part of a system of clandestine signals among men seeking out other men for "lewd" acts, the officer stated in the police report. [...] (Craig reconsiders plan to resign, Gay Attorneys say Idaho senator committed no crime by Lou Chibbaro Jr, Washington Blade, 09/07/2007)

I just don't think that expecting respect for a public space should hinge on whether the would be abuser of the resource is seaking same or opposite sex hookups, or whether they're engaging in some other activitie that impedes the rightful and comfortable access of others to the same space.

I don't believe that Craig, by his alleged behavior and history, was accidentally trolling and had it misinterpreted. (Yes, I'm just that hard hearted.)