perfidy

The chronology suggests the page, if the ID is correct (Bill Quick reports that Passionate America reports the page has been IDed as someone currently working on Istook's campaign), was 18 in 2003.

I think the DC age of consent is 16 so is okay IM'ing dirty stuff to the kid.

He may have violated sexual harrassment laws, but doesn't Congress usually exempt themselves from such laws?

Hell, Gary Studds got a standing ovation and re-elected for screwing a 17-year-old page.

Not to seem insensitive to gay dignity and the whatnot, but he's creepy, disgusting, and rank. All of which suits him perfectly to be a Congresscritter.

Funny thing? I'm left still wondering whether he broke any actual laws.

Foley’s sexual preference was about as well "closeted" as Liberace. I must be old fashioned or paranoid but when I see a well groomed, unmarried, middle-aged man with an effeminate voice, I jump to conclusions. His sexual preference was as well kept a secret as the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife.

That left the Republicans in a bad spot. When they had flimsy evidence of wrongdoing, they would have been killed in the media if they kicked Foley out the closet and Congress. Now they are killed in the media for not outing him.

Well, since YOU brought it up, I'll toss in this snippet from James Taranto's column">http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110009028]column of Monday, Oct 2:

(Quote)

The most fascinating comment about the scandal comes from Andrew Sullivan:

I don't know Foley, although, like any other gay man in D.C., I was told he was gay, closeted, afraid and therefore also screwed up. What the closet does to people--the hypocrisies it fosters, the pathologies it breeds--is brutal. There are many still-closeted gay men in D.C., many of them working for a Republican party that has sadly deeply hostile to gay dignity. How they live with themselves I do not fully understand. . . .

What I do know is that the closet corrupts. The lies it requires and the compartmentalization it demands can lead people to places they never truly wanted to go, and for which they have to take ultimate responsibility. From what I've read, Foley is another example of this destructive and self-destructive pattern for which the only cure is courage and honesty. While gays were fighting for thir [sic] basic equality, Foley voted for the "Defense of Marriage Act." If his resignation means the end of the closet for him, and if there is no more to this than we now know, then it may even be for the good. Better to find integrity and lose a Congressional seat than never live with integrity at all.

It seems to us that someone who is sexually interested in children had damn well better stay in the closet, and if he can't, he should be put in one with a thick metal door that locks from the outside. It is astonishing, and more than a little disturbing, that Sullivan would seek to make Foley a poster child for gay liberation.

Further, has it occurred to Sullivan that his response to the Foley scandal undermines his own credibility as an advocate of same-sex marriage? Sullivan has long claimed to be advancing traditional values. All he wants, he says, is for society to recognize that gay couples are no less capable of serious, loving, lifelong commitments than ordinary couples are.

But if a middle-aged congressman were caught sending lewd messages to 16-year-old girls, what adherent to traditional values would claim that the congressman's real problem is that he is insufficiently open about his sexuality?

(End quote)

I don't know which strikes me as sillier: this being treated as a partisan political matter or this being treated as a plea to help the closeted gay community. I'd guess most folks care about the "minor exploitation" aspect of this story, and not a whit about the gaiety or closetedness or gay dignity of the matter.

But I could be speaking only for myself.