some thoughts on the Foley scandal

Topics: Civil Liberties
06 Oct 2006

From: Ervan Darnell











I don't like defending Republicans, but I do like defending "perverts".

I read the IM conversation between Rep. Foley and one of his pages
[1]. It's a boring exercise in a horny old man hitting on a slightly
shy 16-year old [? see below]. Before I decide if there is anything
wrong with
that, I want to know how good-looking the 16-year old was.... (just
kidding).

Here's the thing: best I can tell from reading it, it's an entirely
voluntary conversation. As best I know, _as of today_, Foley has not
broken any law. His troubles are over merely tawdry activity. It is
legal to talk about sex with minors,
not just engage in it. Even that would be a yawn here as we're talking
about a consenting 16-year old male (I'm going to be sexist and assert
that male consent, while not perfect in all cases, goes
much further than female consent) who claims to be straight and is
merely talking about masturbation with someone. I mention this because
it deflects the charge that this IM was a prelude to a hook-up (yes, it
smells that way, but never came up explicitly). The page indicates
implicitly he's not interested in that. Even if the page is gay, and
just not out yet, whatever. It's like a male high school senior
sleeping with his older female teacher, yawn. Young guys have those
sorts of attractions. The sex is not scandalous (though sleeping with
a teacher while taking the class is inappropriate as would be any sort
of bribery). But afterwards, why does anybody care?

But then I learn that at the time of this IM:

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
The most infuriating aspect of the Mark Foley
fiasco is that we're
still unclear on what exactly it is we're infuriated about. This was
not pedophilia: The pages involved were all above the legal age of
consent in Washington, D.C. It wasn't exactly pederasty either, given
that we have no evidence (at least not yet) of any actual sexual
contact between two live human beings. Sexual harassment? It doesn't
appear that, at the time of the now-infamous instant messages, the
pages were in Foley's employ. [3]

and echoed on Instapundit [4].

so we aren't even talking about a conversation with a minor (for
purposes of sex laws). It's not clear if the page was 18 at the time
of this conversation (because the "16 year-old" was a reference to the
first and more innocuous email, not the age of the IMer) or if the age
of consent is lower in D.C.

Incidentally, I heard an interview with a Miami Herald reporter who
read the first Foley email that Hastert also read. The reporter said
they didn't run a story at the time because there was nothing in the
email that was clearly newsworthy. So, at the time the page was 16 and
the first email contact, we did merely have an "overly friendly" email,
and nothing sexual. No, that's not redeeming to start softening up
minors before they turn 18, but neither is it any sort of sexual
misconduct by itself.

Now the hypocrisies: Thought I don't know Foley's voting record (except
that he did vote against the amendment to ban gay marriage but voted
for the so-called DOMA [2]), if he voted as most house Republicans did,
i.e. homophobically and anti-privacy at every turn, we can at least
appreciate that Foley's lack of privacy and gayness is what trapped
him. Even if not him personally, the irony attaches to the House
Republicans who are now in trouble because they held to those positions.

Hypocrisy falls on the Democrats too. It was only a few years ago they
were arguing that consensual sex should not be a matter of public
scrutiny or political embarrassment. And, we don't even have any
sexual act (so far as we know now) in the Foley case. Consider just
this aspect, the Dems abolished the special prosecutor position because
the special prosecutor was successful in uncovering Clinton's misdeeds,
but the Dems are now targetting Hastert [6] because he did not
investigative enough (not clear that he could have obtained the
necessary warrants anyway). Clinton at least broke the law (perjury)
and had sex with an immediate subordinate (which can be illegal, even
with consent, and certainly is suspect regardless). Whether or not
that was serious enough to warrant impeachment is a fair question, but
at least there was something illegal to get upset about. I don't see
any Dems rushing to defend Foley's much less serious transgression.
Instead, they are taking advantage of the situation for political
gain. Of course, it's Washington, I expect no less, but their
shameless political opportunism is seen to be greater than any
consistent defense of personal privacy.

At least we got this joke out of Republican hypocrisy:
The Republicans in Congress are all in an
uproar because former Rep. Mark
Foley had sexually explicit conversations with a bunch of 16-year-old
boys. If they think about it, there's a silver lining for them: At
least he
didn't want to marry them. [5]



[1] href="http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/story?id=2509586&page=1">http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/story?id=2509586&page=1
[2]
href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-02-foley-profile_x.htm">http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-02-foley-profile_x.htm
[3] The New Republic,
http://www.tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?i 061016&s=sullivan101606
[4] http://instapundit.com/archives/033002.php
[5]
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.humor.funny/browse_thread/thread/4ec9933e6db569fc
[6] http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061006/pl_nm/scandal_dc_15




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