**** Improved! Glenn Greenwald Added Enzymes! ****
Here are the last several paragraphs from David Crary’s article, the thesis of which seems to be that only closeted conservative gays are pedophiles.
[Barney] Frank predicted Wednesday that the Foley scandal, plus Kolbe’s departure, will create a difficult atmosphere for any gays, closeted or not, seeking to remain active nationally as Republican politicians.
“Now they’re viewed as causing trouble,” Frank said in a telephone interview. ”I think you can see a purge coming.”
Conservative gay columnist Andrew Sullivan wrote that he was among many in Washington who had heard that Foley was gay yet unwilling to come out.
“What the closet does to people  the hypocrisies it fosters, the pathologies it breeds  is brutal,” Sullivan wrote on his Web site. “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.”
Sullivan also asserted that many closeted gay men in Washington work for the Republicans despite what he described as GOP policies “deeply hostile to gay dignity.”
The president of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which recruits openly gay candidates to run for office, said many of those remaining in the closet “think there’s something wrong with being gay.”
”From what we’ve seen of Mark’s actions, he felt is was OK to be gay on the side, but not to be openly gay,” said Chuck Wolfe, who has known Foley for many years. “It was all on the sly.”
Among the gay activists who had been trying to “out” Foley was Michael Rogers, who runs a Web site aimed at exposing closeted Republicans whose political work includes opposing gay rights.“The conservative side is encouraging them to hide their lives from public view,” Rogers said. ”Had Foley lived his life openly and been proud of who he is, this never would have happened.”
UPDATE: From Glenn and his Sockpuppet Army:
Denny Hastert is smack in the middle of one of the tawdriest and ugliest sex scandals in American political history. As a result, he has been the target of aggressive criticism, even from a few members of his own party, and, by all accounts, is desperately battling to keep his job.
Please nominate your own tawdriest, ugliest sex scandals in American political history here. No need to send a teapot. I have a couple already.
h/t: Patterico
Don’t talk to me about Clinton. What could be tawdry or ugly about a married sitting (heh) President being orally serviced in the Oval Office by an intern pizza delivery girl while on the phone, talking about Kosovo, then subsequently lying about it under oath and on television to the American public, and getting her a job at a major cosmetics company? Were there any warning signs that the White House staff should have noticed? Shouldn’t they have been more proactive in warning young women away from the man? I mean, please: if he’d only been up front about his sexual predilection for appearance-challenged chubby hosebags, none of that would ever have happened. He should have levelled with us. Oh, and cigars, too. Nothing ugly about that image.
So true.
If only I were allowed to love 17 year olds in public, I never would have had to privately IM them.
In DC, Foley is allowed to love 17 year olds in public. The age of consent is 16.
I think the man is slime, but he has broken no law, even if he did have sex with some of the pages.
Would some one of the left please tell me what this man’s crime is?
(I understand why Republicans are upset…I just don’t get why the Democrats and the MSM are)
In DC, Foley is allowed to love 17 year olds in public. The age of consent is 16.
True at least legally. Whether that is true socially is another question.
Anyway, Sullivan’s point is bunk. How does he know what Foley’s deal is? Maybe what gratifies him sexually is exchanging naughty IMs with 17 year old boys. Even if he had chosen to live out and proud with another 52-year old gay man, it wouldn’t have fulfilled that desire.
People make ruinious life decisions over sex every damn day. Sometimes it’s because what they really want to do isn’t all that socially acceptable (this would include wanting sex with someone besides your spouse), but sometimes it’s because part of what excites them sexually is the secrecy and of something.
By Sullivan’s reasoning, the guy that just shot up the Amish school was forced to do it because molesting young girls just isn’t accepted by society. If only it were, all those Amish girls would be alive right now. Damn closet.
That sounds vaguely familiar.
I have yet to see a single article anywhere about how much more sophisticated the French are about this sort of thing.
Things aren’t right.
Government officials should not behave in that manner with their employees, and especially not with minors entrusted to their care. When the parents of those boys sent them off to work in government, they had the right to assume that their children would be protected from that kind of sleazy behavior. Mark Foley betrayed their trust. IMO, that was reason enough for him to resign.
What happens in the closet stays in the closet. (Sorry, I just wanted to say that.)
‘Courage and honesty’? Tell that to Joe Lieberman, Andrew. You’re no expert on anything–sexual or otherwise.
We need our own canard, guys. The libs have taken over the word ‘chickenhawk’ (although it would make perfect sense in this context). How about this? Only sexual predators should be permitted to criticise sexual predators. By this logic, the only Dem with the moral validity to criticize Foley would be Bill Clinton. I doubt they’ll listen to such an argument–despite its sterling pedigree.
Andrew Sullivan is in favor of cheating on his significant other.
We are to take his pronouncements on sexual propriety seriously?
Gerry Studds, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Wilbur Mills, John Kennedy (whoops! Wasn’t reported so I guess it wasn’t a scandal.), Lyndon Johnson (Whoops! See previous note!), several Republicans which I can’t be bothered naming. All of whom are unique from Foley in that they actually…umm…ahh…HAD SEX! (so, OK, Frank just allowed a male prostitution ring run by his lover to operate out of his home.)
FOLEY MUST DIE!!!!!!!!!!! EEEYYYYAAARRRGGGG!!!!
The real entertainment doesn’t start until Dean comments. I’m making popcorn for that one!
Greenwald is such a dickhead. And yet I gather he used to show Ms. Andy around town before he fled to Brazil. What a pair!
Being a gay elected Republican, of course. Do try to keep up.
I’m not pleased with Foley’s actions, legal or not. In some weird way, I agree with Sullivan that a politician should be open about his sexual preference, only b/c I believe the public has a right to consider anything relevant to his representation of the community. How is Foley going to vote on issues that effect homosexuals- will his position be at odds with both his constituents and his political party ? The people he represents have a right to know if his sexual preference will effect his positions on some issues which may be important to people. Hiding in the closet, waiting to be outed, solicitating pages- all of these things may have been avoided if his constituents were aware of his preference- or, at the very least, it would be up to the people who voted him to make an informed choice whether to elect a gay congressman to represent their district. As usual, the real victims are the people in the political distract that he was supposed to represent.
The disgusting thing that the democrats are trying to do is once again, take away people’s abilities to make their choices on whom to vote for. Their attempts to humiliate/out gay republicans, crying hypocrisy at every turn is completely at odds with their party lines of tolerance and diveristy – are they saying “dont vote for Congressman Smith” because he’s gay or because he’s a “hypocrite”? Either way will work for democrats.
In the context of the Foley case, one of my faves has to be (former) Rep. Mel Reynolds:
Melvin Jay “Mel” Reynolds was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from the state of Illinois.
Reynolds was unsuccessful in his 1986, 1988, and 1990 campaigns against Congressman Gus Savage. (btw, in 1989, Savage was accused of trying to force himself on a female Peace Corps worker in Zaire. Savage denied these allegations and blamed it on the “racist press.” In January 1990, the House Ethics Committee decided that the events did occur, but it did not take disciplinary action because Savage wrote a letter of apology to the woman.) However, Reynolds was able to defeat Savage in 1992. He served in the House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995.
In August 1994, he was indicted for having sex with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. Despite the charges, he continued his campaign and was re-elected in November 1994. Reynolds initially denied the charges, which he claimed were racially motivated. On August 22, 1995 he was convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. He resigned his seat on October 1, 1995.
Reynolds was sentenced to five years in prison and expected to be released in 1998. However, in April 1997, he was convicted on 15 unrelated counts of bank fraud and lying to SEC investigators. These charges resulted in an additional sentence of 78 months in federal prison. Reynolds served all of his first sentence and served forty-two months in prison for the later charges. At that point, U.S. President Bill Clinton commuted the sentence for bank fraud. As a result, Reynolds was released from prison and served the remaining time in a half way house.
In 2004, he was overwhelmingly defeated by Jesse Jackson, Jr., in his attempt to win back his old House seat. Reynolds currently works for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
Heh. The ironic part about Mel Reynolds was that he was elected in place of “Savage Gus”, in part, by saying what a creep Savage was…