Ryan this sort of goes with what you are saying. While I wouldn’t want my 15 year old hooking up with college age people, you are still at least looking at an age difference of 10 or fewer years. Foley is 50ish, and 50 with 16-18 year olds makes me very leery.

Regards,
Peter H.

The general publics’ view of homosexuality has been the televised portions of the gay parades, always the most extreme elements. Will and Grace, (ughh!) and all those Bravo shows that trumpet and highlight the most flaming members of the community as main stream gay men.

So now, due to Foley it is clear, a man becomes gay because he was molested by a priest as a teenager, and has no self control and must behave in a similar manner 40 years later. He just can’t help it, it is not his fault.
So yes, it would be really nice if instead of hiding in rehab he came out and said: yes I am a gay man, but my attraction to teenagers is a problem I have that is unrelated to my sexual orientation. (there are many a straight man who is equally attracted and acts upon that urge with teenage girls).
And I wish he had never brought up the molestation, because it makes him the victim and perpetrates the myth, that gayness is the result of someone else’s action, not a natural trait that appears in a certain segment of the population regardless of life experiences.

Foley owes it to more than just himself to show a moral backbone, but of course he won’t. This puts a much larger burden on the moral, upstanding members of the Gay community. The hope has been that the more gay people take on community wide positions, the better it is for the community as a whole. The fact that he has these failings is not the problem, many people fail, that is what being human is about. But to really be a man he should go through the moral examination that Dan stated.
But who am I kidding, with celebrities and politicians there is no moral responsibility towards a community, it is all about me-me-me!!!

And, this is only going to piss people off further, but I think people are in denial if they don’t think intergenerational predation is rare in the gay community. I knew a guy in college who became hiv-infected at 17 through an affair with a guy in his thirties who picked him up on the internet. Also, we are aware that there are a lot of chat rooms devoted to older men cruising for barely legal trim, not to mention adult video companies marketing making mints off ‘barely legal’ product. It isn’t the right-wing making this sh*t up, it really exists.

There seems to be some reluctance at addressing this reality.

But again they are saying that they are other Pages that Rep. Foley was emailing also.

monty

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashmfa.htm

And if you read the post, you would realize my point was not about politics, but about morals. It’s too bad you’re so eager to attack Republicans that you can’t engage me in a discussion, particularly on the point of the post to which you attach your commen

If I read the post…. LOL. One thing is predictable about you, Dan. If someone disagrees with you or examines the suppostions of your posts instead of
their explicit comment alone, that person did not read your post and is in some other way debilitated.

Your post is consistent with the rest of the posting on here by Bruce. It focuses on sexual morality and identity rather than the ethical question (whose political consequences can hardly be separated from any aspect of the story, since politics may have motivated the leadership’s silence for years).

Of course, it’s your right to ignore the ethical question of your party’s leadership. But the silence is deafening while you rant about the morality of Mr. Foley.

And, of course, I further not that even though it’s inappropriate for me to question what is presumed and implied in your post politically, it is entirely okay for you to change the subject to blame the media.

Whether there was a political motive in that, I have no idea. What I do know is that you people are whining about playing politics with personal morality when your party has campaigned on moral issues and indeed came to power claiming to restore ethics to government. We’ve had nothing but one scandal after another.

Isn’t it rich, though, that a scandal originating in SEX, about which the GOP has campaigned so heartily, may well bring you down? Just another example of how fanatics are almost always trying to negotiate their own impulses by criticising and trying to control others.

But wait, I’m off topic! Back to the media…I mean morality.

Sexual predators are apparently welcome in the Democratic party.

That’s the real moral issue. Is this just a game, or do you really care about the values, about the real people affected by sexual predators like Foley (but also like Bill Clinton, Mel Reynolds, and Gerry Studds)? Morally, how people are reacting to this scandal reveals a lot about their true moral character.

Active gay participation exists and shapes the Republican party at EVERY level of government. As long as the participants remain closeted to protect the delicate sensibilities of the fundochoicers, their contributions will be discounted and their lives will be seen as diseased. Foley’s choices are more about the closet than pedophilia.

You must be kidding.

This is all Republican. The Democrats can sit back and do nothing. If they’re smart, they’ll just that and the Republican leaders will hang themselves by passing the buck back and forth to each other.

Enjoy.

And if the libs are to be consistent, they won’t actually give a shit and will fight to the death for his right to bugger little boys.

If there is really no wrong doing (no laws broken), Foley should complelely come out and blast the homophobe democrats.

He should stop trying to blame his past clergy and homsexual status for his actions… he is obviously a chicken hawk.

This falls back to what I was saying in previous posts about the actual act of “SEX” (in this case the perception of sex, so far anyway).

Horse shit!
We KNOW what the House leadership knew and when they knew it. They as well as the FBI and ABC didn’t think much of it. The REAL question is who saves their IMs and emails for years, who received them and why did they hold onto them until just before Congress recesses? Why did the “victims” go to a Soros front? Don’t you think that as pages they could have gone straight to the leadership? If nothing else, they could have given the info to “democrat” leaders if they didn’t trust Republicans.

Also, why are the libs pretending to give a damn about the kids?

Further, of course ABC news is going to say Republicans gave it to them. You don’t honestly expect them to turn on their masters, do you?

Foley and I grew up at a time when, at BEST, homosexuality was considered a mental illness. Today may be easier for gay kids even in the closet as there’s far more positive information available. I left the closet decades ago; Foley never did. Big mistake on his part. It doesn’t excuse what he did but I can be somewhat sympathetic to his problems.

“A senior House Republican has asked the House clerk to look into allegations that then-Rep. Mark Foley was turned away from the congressional page dorm on Capitol Hill after arriving there intoxicated one night.”

Oh my.

People who make good moral choices aren’t all that newsworthy. And Ian in #8, I’m just regretting that Jonathan is so obsessed with politics that he used the comments section of this non-political post to attack Republicans.