A Republican US senator, Lance Dreyer, held a press conference yesterday. He thanked the media for showing up, and then protested that he was not gay and had never been gay. He said he had never been involved in any way with a man. He said that he had hired a lawyer to help him defend his good name. Furthermore, Dreyer said, he had no plans of resigning. Then, instead of allowing the two dozen media members, including TV and radio reporters, to ask questions, he simply got in his car and left. His remarks made headlines on all the local and national TV shows.

In June, Dreyer had been arrested in an airport rest room by a plain-clothes detective. Because of complaints from the public that gay men had been having sex in the rest room, the city’s vice squad went into action. The detective, Thad Grey, would sit in a stall and wait for men to suggest having sex with him.

Dreyer entered the rest room and sat in the stall just to the left of the detective. Dreyer’s right foot edged closer and closer to Grey’s stall. When his foot was under the divider, he started tapping his foot. Tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Grey repeated the seven taps in the same pattern. Then Dreyer tapped with his knuckle on the dividing wall. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Grey repeated the signal. Then Dreyer put his right hand under the dividing wall and gave the thumbs-up signal. Grey gave the same signal back, and then walked into Dreyer’s stall and arrested him for soliciting sex in a public facility.

Dreyer pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “disorderly conduct.” He denied that his actions were signals for sex. He said that he was merely signaling that he had no toilet paper in his stall.