As much as
official Washington and the media establishment remain
obsessed with the political fallout from the ever-escalating
Mark Foley scandal, what has so far gone unmentioned
is the simple truth that some of the teenage House
pages clearly enjoyed their improper online dalliances
with the disgraced former Congressman. The transcripts of
the IM exchanges provided to ABC News by two of the
pages say it all. One, a high school lacrosse player,
apparently had no qualms about telling the
ex-representative the size of his genitals and admitted to
being turned on by the conversation, while another
page engaged in actual cybersex with Foley (right
before a House floor vote, no less), then said goodbye
by mimicking a kiss with the help of a few choice keyboard
symbols.
Not that their
reciprocation excuses Foley's totally
irresponsible behavior in any way. Being the adult
in each situation--and one who headed the powerful
House caucus on missing and exploited children at
that--he should have known better than to
take advantage of his young friends' burgeoning
sexuality as he did. But isn't it interesting that in
all the nonstop news coverage since the story
first broke a week ago, no one has yet remarked
upon this mutual sexual desire, as glaringly obvious as
it is? It may indeed be the most scandalous aspect
of the scandal, in part because of rampant
cultural denial about teenagers' libidos. But the
telling silence also speaks volumes about the continuing
power of the public closet in America
today--how even in the face of indisputable
evidence of homosexuality, most observers (read: the
mainstream media) will choose to look the other way.Among the
various explanations for the scandal offered in recent
days by House Republicans, talking heads, and
Foley himself (as expressed through his lawyer),
none have come close to acknowledging what really was
going on here: namely, that a horny, powerful
older gay man successfully seduced a few 16- and
17-year-old guys who apparently are gay too. Similar
seductions happen all the time in a gay male culture
that sanctifies youth, just as they occur
frequently enough in a straight culture with its
own fixation on underage shenanigans. (How many
teacher-student scandals have there been over the
years, to name one genre?)Reading the IM
transcripts on ABCNews.com, I was reminded of my own
online affairs when I was 15 and 16 with strange
men from across the country. In the early-to-mid
1990s, when the Internet--not to mention gay
visibility and acceptance--was just starting
to take off, exchanging sexually charged messages
with these random older guys known to me only by lines
of text was the only way I could explore my sexual
feelings. It was way better than hopelessly
fantasizing about the straight boys I glimpsed partially
undressed in the locker room of my suburban D.C. high
school. And in retrospect, it was an essential
part of my self-discovery as a gay man.I know I'm
not alone in that, which is why I don't find the
content of the IMs as shocking as the mere fact
that Foley would engage in such behavior in the
first place--and with an unbelievably identifiable
screen name as "Maf54." Did he
really think he could get away with it? Or, as the
conventional wisdom in the gay blogosphere would
have it, was he so screwed up psychologically from
being in the closet (or from being molested by a
priest as a youth) that the only way he could fulfill
himself sexually was to act out with minors?But the
reality, as numerous press accounts have made abundantly
clear this last week, is that Foley's
sexuality was an "open secret" (as CNN
correspondent Dana Bash put it) both inside the Beltway
and in his West Palm Beach, Fla., Congressional
district for some time now. Although he may have
called a press conference in 2003 to squelch rumors that
he is gay (while not actually saying he wasn'tgay), it was known as far
back as 1996, thanks to anAdvocateinvestigation, that he
probably was--and in recent years he was spotted
in local D.C. gay bars, as other so-called
"closeted" politicians have on occasion.
Back in Florida, he would often be seen with a
longtime male companion. According to one report I
read, local journalists even knew of his penchant for
hitting on younger men. Maybe notteenagemen, mind you, but
younger men all the same. It's
just--whether because of fear, lack of
interest, or an outdated sense of propriety around
disclosing one's sexual
orientation--no one bothered to report on it, just
as no one is reporting now on the blatant gay
overtones of an otherwise "political" scandal.It's not
hard to imagine that Foley, like certain news anchors
and Hollywood leading men, must have come to rely
on that protection from the press, basically
living his life as an openly gay man without worrying
that he would be outed. Indeed, the editor of
The Miami Herald, which along withThe St.
Petersburg Timeshad received copies
last year of the same e-mails from an upset former page
that ABC News used to break the story, said as
much when he told the Associated Press why he
chose not to do anything with the information then.
"Given the potentially devastating impact
that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have
on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay,
and lacking any corroborating information, we
chose not to do a story," Tom Fiedler
explained--as if Foley's sexuality was as
important a reason for backing off the story as
the lack of corroboration of the accusations.But what if
the mainstream press had mustered the nerve to cover
Foley's sexuality by the time they had
enough corroboration of it(which, according to an
item on Radaronline.com this week, suggests was by
2002 at the latest)? What if, instead of hiding
behind misguided policies against "outing"
public figures, big-time newspaper editors in
Washington had actually let the truth be told about
Foley? Might he have felt a bit more
accountable--or, at the very least, more
scrutinized? Might he have cut out his misbehavior
accordingly? And might the Republican Party have
been forced--for once--to deal with an
actual homosexual in their midst, one who held a visible
children's-welfare post? Imagine what the
party's conservative base would have
thought of that.
Instead,
regrettably, we must watch as right-wing lunatics have a
field day over the Foley debacle, seeing
it as the ultimate proof that being gay is
tantamount to being a pedophile, while the media, far
from debunking that convenient fiction, simply declaims
"Foley is gay, Foley is gay,"
without any greater context. Meanwhile, the man himself
is holed up at an undisclosed rehab center,
following a tried-and-true method for scandal
management: fess up, enter 12-step recovery, hopefully
avoid civil lawsuits and criminal charges while snagging
the lucrative book deal, and then, upon the
book's publication some years later, become
anointed by the gay establishment as their newest role
model a la James McGreevey (whose many alleged
misdeeds as a New Jersey politician have been
largely swept under the rug since his own book was
published a few weeks ago).And the
mysterious, anonymous young pages who helped bring Foley
down despite getting off with him previously? When
will they speak publicly? And when they do, what
will they say?
