Do I Make You Horny?

You have to admit, for a blogger like me the story of Rep. Mark Foley's resignation from Congress is like Christmas arriving a few months early. But it's not the facts themselves, as intriguing as they are, that is, or at least should be, the main focus of our attention. It's the atmosphere around them.

Let me explain what I mean.

The facts: Rep. Foley (R-FL) is, according to press accounts, a closeted gay man whose colleagues knew all about both his sexual orientation and his preference for page boys. His tastes in this matter were so well known, according to a Washington Post story, that congressional pages used to warn each other about him. This suggests that it was hardly a secret that Rep. Foley lusted after teenage boys. To be fair to the former Congressman, who has resigned his office in the fact of this scandal, it has not been alleged that he did anything more with the pages than send them some slightly tacky e-mails. If he had any physical contact with any of them, or had actual sex with any of them, it has not been made public.

What impresses me about the whole thing is the rank hypocrisy of the Republicans. Just think back almost a decade to the Clinton scandal, and how high and mighty the GOP members of Congress was over Clinton's consensual relationship with a 21-year-old woman. They were outraged enough at his conduct to impeach him. And yet here they were harboring a man who could arguably be considered a pedophile, and they did nothing.

House Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) not only knew about it but lied about it -- first saying that he only found out about it last week, then, according to the Washington Post account, changed his story and admitted that he'd know about Congressman Foley's fondness for ephebes for months. Will Denny Hastert take Congressman Foley's lead and resign for lying about this issue?

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are doing the predictable moralistic bloviating about Rep. Foley and his depraved tastes, but you've got to wonder. If Republicans didn't have their heads completely up their ass on the subject of homosexuality, would this sad incident have happened? If Rep. Foley had been able to meet some guy his own age and settle down and get married (you know, the way that Republicans are pushing a Constitutional amendment to prevent), would he have been trolling for high school-aged pages?

Maybe he would have anyway: you never know. But just a few weeks ahead of a midterm election, it's nice to have a reminder of what hypocrites the Republicans in Congress can be.

Tom Moran