There is a curious paradox about the Larry Craig affair. He is being drummed out of the Senate for being homosexual.

Yet the loudest voices demanding his resignation are not from his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who more in sorrow than anger are anxious that his continuing presence will hurt their party’s electoral prospects.

The most vituperative attacks upon the wretched Senator Craig come from those who profess to care most about homosexuals.

In the last 40 years American gays have transformed their position in society. They may not have convinced everyone that their lifestyle is equivalent to heterosexuality, but they have made great strides towards equality.

Same sex unions are legal in some states and the notion of gay marriage has become a prime subject for presidential candidates. As we saw this week, moves to ensure equality in the workplace irrespective of sexual orientation are causing mayhem among those religious groups whose morality insists that homosexuality is a sin. It is no longer respectable to be homophobic, any more than it is polite to express racialist views. Today it is homophobia, not homosexuality, that, in Oscar Wilde’s phrase, is “the love which dare not speak its name.”

The benefits of the change in public attitudes are mostly restricted, however, to those who have declared themselves to be gay.

Despite his denials, everything suggests that Mr. Craig is a closet gay who finds excitement and solace in inviting anonymous sexual encounters in public places.

After years of rumors about his sexuality, he was caught by police soliciting for favors in a bathroom in Minneapolis airport. The result is a human tragedy, not only for Mr. Craig but also for his wife and family.

His insistence that he quickly pleaded guilty to a minor offence rather than confront the evidence, and his persistent denial of his feelings, merely adds to the sadness.

Yet there was little sympathy for Mr. Craig’s plight among Mr. Craig’s liberal enemies.

Byron Williams, a pastor in Oakland, Calif., blogging in the Huffington Post, had little compassion for Mr. Craig’s gay turmoil: “We have repeatedly witnessed the Larry Craigs, the Mark Foleys, and the Ted Haggards cruelly using their influence by day to dehumanize the same folk that they become by night.

“In doing so, they wrap themselves in a cocoon of self-hatred, eagerly feeding on the nutrients of ambition as a way to not confront their own reality.”

The editor of the Georgetown Voice was more concerned with the reputation of homosexuals at large than with a gay senator’s embarrassment.

“By overtly discriminating against gays and lesbians, conservatives have encouraged many people in the political arena to conceal their sexuality,” he wrote. “This leads closeted individuals into more secretive and seedier situations which, when discovered, encourage the public to unfairly associate homosexuality with inappropriate behavior.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which might be expected to back gays, instead put Mr. Craig at the head of an ad campaign drawing attention to other Republicans caught in the ethical mire.

Mr. Craig is not the first gay man, nor the first gay senator, to be married with children. He has rightly been accused of hypocrisy. But those who point a finger of blame should beware of becoming hypocrites themselves.

What is needed before we can become a nation which truly embraces all those whose individual thoughts stray from the norm, as the American founding tradition demands, is a little more understanding for those whose true nature leads them into trouble.