When You Can't Tell News From An Onion Article

The Onion does great satire. It is bad news when you can't tell it from real news. October 26, 2007 Associated Press is reporting that Senator Happy Feet is going to argue that his actions in the bathroom stall are constitutionally protected free speech:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Idaho Sen. Larry Craig will argue before an appeals court that Minnesota's disorderly conduct law is unconstitutional as it applies to his conviction in a bathroom sex sting, according to a new court filing.
This is the first time Craig's attorneys have raised that issue. However, an earlier friend-of-the-court filing by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that Craig's foot-tapping and hand gesture under a stall divider at the Minneapolis airport are protected by the First Amendment.

Based on similar challenges that have been made against soliciting sex in restrooms I am guessing that the argument will be:

1. Since the Lawrence v. Texas (2003) decision, homosexual sex isn't unlawful.

2. Soliciting someone in a public restroom to go have sex is simply free speech. Only if they had sex in a public space would be it be unlawful to make that solicitation.

The logic is impeccable. So if a guy approaches strangers on the street asking them if they want to go back to his place for sex (and perhaps being very crude and lewd in how he solicits them), that's constitutionally protected free speech.

There has been, at least the 1970s, a certain level of this sort of thing that goes on in bars and discos. (I have to rely on what I read and was told; I had some disco shirts of the era, but I never went to those of places when I was single.)

I knew someone back when I worked at JPL who would, to save time, just approach every woman in a disco and make a single sentence query, and yes, it rhymed with the title of that famous song of the era, Disco Duck. He told me that he only occasionally got slapped, and usually within the first 50 women he approached, he would get a yes.

Still, this was part of the territory of discos and other "meat markets." You don't go into places like that if you are really more suited to the ice cream social at church. Public restrooms are a somewhat different situation. I really don't think I want to live in a society where this version of free speech trumps laws against rude and disorderly behavior.

UPDATE: I'm told that the ACLU brief argues that what happens inside a public restroom stall is private, and therefore protected by Lawrence. In some ways, that's just a different outrageous claim.