Foley Sex Scandal: Is He a Gay Man, Or Is He a Pedophile? He Cannot Be Both
Disgraced Florida Ex-Congressman's Lawyer Claims that Foley Admits to Being 'Gay,' But Gay Men Have Relations Only With Men -- Not With Boys -- And There's (So Far) No Evidence That Foley Ever Had Adult Male Companions
TUESDAY NIGHT EXTRA
By Skeeter Sanders
The lurid sex scandal that has disgraced former Representative Mark Foley (R-Florida) -- and has seriously jeopardized the Republicans' continued control of Congress -- has displayed one ugly truth: That there are still too many people who cannot tell the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia.
The scandal has triggered a firestorm of anger among hard-line social conservatives -- part of the GOP's core constituency -- with some calling for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) and others resorting to intemperate anti-gay language.
GOP strategist Bay Buchanan, appearing Monday on CNN's "The Situation Room," called Foley "a known homosexual" in an angry denunciation of House Republican leaders' lack of disciplinary action against Foley when they knew about his indiscretions for nearly a year.
But is Foley really gay? Despite a statement by his attorney early Tuesday evening that Foley has admitted as much, an investigation by The 'Skeeter Bites Report could find no evidence that he is.
To the contrary, there is evidence that strongly points to Foley having an erotic attraction exclusively to adolescent teenagers -- suggesting a pedophile, not homosexual, orientation.
Contrary to a widely-held belief of a direct correlation between the two, homosexuality and pedophilia are two completely different sexual orientations.
If Foley Really Is Gay, Why No Adult Male Partners?
At a news conference early Tuesday evening in West Palm Beach, Florida, Foley's attorney, David Roth, told reporters that his client "now acknowledges that he is gay" -- and that he was molested between the ages 13 and 15 by a clergyman.
Roth reiterated his forceful denial on Monday that Foley had ever had "inappropriate contact of a physical or sexual nature" with minors. "Mark Foley has never, ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a minor in his life," Roth said. "He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile."
Yet in the mushrooming scandal over Foley's sexually explicit Internet messages with teenaged boys, no one has yet come forward with any evidence that the 52-year-old Foley has ever been in a relationship with an adult male partner or had sexual liaisons with adult men.
The operative word here is "adult."
Adult men who are gay are attracted to and have relationships only with other adult men. If you're a man and you're sexually attracted to other men, you're gay. If you're a man and you're sexually attracted to both men and women, you're bisexual (as, for the record, this blogger is).
But if you're a man and you're sexually attracted to adolescents -- or worse, pre-pubescent children -- regardless of whether they're boys or girls,then you're neither gay nor bisexual. You're a pedophile.
Only pedophiles are sexually attracted to kids. If Foley really is gay, then he should have a history of having had liaisons -- or a long-term relationship -- with other adult gay or bisexual men. No evidence of such a history with Foley has been found so far.
To the contrary, the evidence that has been uncovered -- and continues to pile up -- strongly indicates that Foley has an erotic attraction exclusively to adolescents, even if he never acted on it.
The fact that the adolescents Foley is attracted to appear to all be boys is irrelevant; the bottom line is that he's apparently not attracted to adult men.
To date, not a single one of the sexually suggestive e-mails and instant messages issued by Foley that have been discovered so far have been addressed to adult males. All of the recipients appear to have been adolescent boys.
A Columnist's "Outing" of Foley Backfires
Is it any wonder, then that Foley would react so angrily to a 2003 column published in an Miami alternative weekly newspaper that "outed" him as gay? If Foley had an adult male companion or had had a history of relationships with other adult gay men -- he is, after all, single -- he probably would have "come out" on his own or, at the very least, confirmed the columnist's expose.
In May of that year, Bob Norman, a columnist for the weekly New Times,wrote a column in which he claimed that Foley, a six-term moderate Republican, was gay. According to Norman, "It was already common knowledge among political and media types" in South Florida.
Foley had built a record in the House as a strong supporter of gay civil rights, breaking from his fellow Republicans by being a co-sponsor of a bill that would ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation, according to the gay weekly The Washington Blade. He infuriated GOP conservatives by twice voting against a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage -- although he did vote in favor of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.
Norman said that, given Foley's record in the House, he ran his column in the hope that making what he thought was Foley's gay sexual orientation public "would do some good."
Norman's column was immediately posted on at least 20 Web sites, including that of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, of which New Times is a member. It was then picked up by dozens of gay newspapers across the country, including The Blade, The Weekly News of Miami and the national gay newsmagazine The Advocate. It also received a mention in Hotline, a popular inside-the-beltway political gossip magazine.
But instead of "coming out," as Norman had hoped, Foley took the unusual step of calling a news conference to denounce Norman's column and other "rumors" about his sexuality as "revolting and unforgivable." Yet he repeatedly refused to answer reporters' questions to either confirm or deny that he was gay. "My sex life has nothing to do with my duties as a lawmaker," he said angrily.
At the time of the Norman column, Foley was running for the 2004 Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Bob Graham, a Democrat. After the New Times column ran, Foley withdrew from the race, citing a need to care for his ailing father (The seat was eventually won by Republican Mel Martinez).
Foley May Have Feared Exposure of His X-Rated E-Mails As Early As '03
As it turned out, Foley may have had another reason to be angry at Norman: He may have been terrified that someone would find out that he had been sending sexually explicit e-mails and Internet instant messages -- not to other adult gay or bisexual men, but to adolescents.
He had a reason to be terrified: After all, Foley was the chairman of the House Committee on Missing and Exploited Children. Just last year, the House passed legislation he wrote that would subject child sex offenders to stringent monitoring requirements and to tough penalties for failing to comply with registration requirements. "We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley said at the time.
He also sponsored a bill that enabled youth organizations, such as the Boy Scouts of America and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to have access to FBI fingerprint background checks of prospective adult employees to help protect children from pedophile predators.
Foley knew that if anyone discovered that he was sending sexually explicit online messages to teenaged Capitol Hill page boys, he would be branded a predatory pedophile himself -- not to mention the ultimate hypocrite.
As it turned out, someone did discover his online peccadilloes -- and the result is the most devastating political hurricane to hit Washington since Watergate -- and it's far from over.
An All-Out Conservative Revolt Against GOP Leadership
GOP leaders are taking a bitter beating from their most loyal constituents: conservatives. In a scathing editorial published Tuesday, The Washington Times, one of the most reliably conservative voices in the nation's capital, called for Hastert to "resign his speakership at once" for not doing enough to investigate questions about Foley's E-mails.
"Either he [Hastert] was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations, or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away," The Times editorial thundered.
The newspaper called on Republicans to replace Hastert as speaker with Representative Henry Hyde (R-Illinois), chairman of the House International Relations Committee. Hyde, who's retiring at the end of the year, "would preside over the remaining three months of the 109th Congress in a manner best suited for a full and exhaustive investigation until a new speaker for the 110th Congress is elected in January."
Hastert promptly rejected The Times editorial, with a spokesman saying that the speaker will stay on. "The speaker has and will lead the Republican conference to another majority in the 110th Congress," said Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean.
Tony Perkins, president of the hard-right Family Research Council, told The Washington Post that, "there's a real chance" that the Foley sex scandal could cost the GOP their majorities in both the House and the Senate. "I think the next 48 hours are critical in how this is handled," he said, adding that "when a party holds itself out as the guardian of [family] values, this [the scandal] is not helpful."
Joe Gaylord, the chief adviser to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R- Georgia), warned that the fallout from the Foley scandal -- coming on the heels of new controversies over President Bush's handling of the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq -- may all but guarantee the Democrats taking back control of the House in the November 7 elections.
"The part that causes the greatest fallout is the obvious kind of pall that an incident like this would put on our hardest-core voters, who are evangelical Christians," Gaylord told The Post. "The thing I have said almost since this cycle began is the real worry you have is that [Republicans] just won't turn out. This is one more nail in that coffin."
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Volume I, Number 46
Copyright 2006, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.