The wedge issue
that won the Republicans control of Congress back in the
'90s will be the same issue that will bring them down
this year--queer civil rights.
With the ball now
in the GOP's court, thanks to Florida Republican Mark
Foley's shenanigans with underage congressional pages
as his hopeful boy toys, the house that homophobia
built for the Republicans is now crumbling like a
house of cards.
And with voter
confidence in Republicans propitiously diving just weeks
before the midterm election and a media frenzy having fun
with the story like children playing in autumn leaves,
the Foley sex scandal is less about his illness and
more about the Republicans' sickness for power.
In mounting a
family values platform where no child is left behind, the
Republicans were criminal in their knowing neglect of their
pages.
And to equate the
problem of Foley's predatory penchant for young boys
to his sexual orientation ignores the gravity of the
illness and the overwhelming evidence that shows the
preponderance of pedophiles are heterosexual.
But it also
ignores the Republicans' egregious violation of queer
civil rights as well as their hubris not to expect the
issue on which they willfully trampled to show up
again in a way that would embarrass them and possibly
lose them seats in the upcoming midterm election.
While I think
it's God writing straight with crooked lines, Gerri
Outlaw of Governors State University in Illinois said
of the latest news, "I think it's funny
that Republicans have a scandal of this nature and it
won't go away."
Foley is
certainly culpable for his action and should be punished for
it. But the real reason the sex scandal won't
go away is because Foley is not the main issue
here.
Instead, Foley is
the prism through which we see a Republican political
machine exploiting queers and children to maintain dominance
by any means necessary.
When the question
was posed to the Republican speaker of the House,
Dennis Hastert of Illinois, about when he knew of
Foley's behavior, the query suggests that
others knew that a right course of action could have
been pursued. While it also suggests that only a few were
privy to Foley's dark side, many knew at least
three years ago. Jim Kolbe, Congress's only
openly gay Republican member, reportedly knew six years
ago.
So why did no one
speak up?
"History
suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping
power, it will only be a matter of time before the
power becomes the entire point," editorialized
The Boston Globe last week. "Policy,
ideology, and ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a
political machine that exists to win elections and dispense
the goodies that come as a result."
Foley also was
the "right" queer puppet Republicans
needed--politically closeted and ambitiously
driven.
His 1996 vote
supporting the antigay Defense of Marriage Act would lead
you to think he was antiqueer. But Foley's
congressional record suggests otherwise with his
pro-queer position on AIDS funding
and domestic-partner benefits, his office being a
queer-friendly safe zone, and a Human Rights Campaign
voting score of 80-plus out of 100. And in his
personal life, Foley was out.
But Foley was
nonetheless a gatekeeper for the Republicans. His error is
not that he is Republican. Foley's error is that he
dissociated his queerness from his political
ambition.
Politically
closeted in order to maintain his voting constituency in a
so-called red state, Foley participated in the
Republicans' homophobic drive for political
dominance. And now Foley not only finds himself to be
expendable to them, but he also finds himself to be their
fall guy--as queers were designed to be in this
present-day political administration.
When President
Bush did not win the popular vote in the 2000 election and
it was discovered that at least 3 million conservative
evangelicals stayed at home, Bush advisor Karl Rove
decided "to expand the base of religious voters
with a sharper, harder, more direct message to
invigorate the faithful--maybe throw a little sex and
fear into the mixture. Bush needed to win reelection,
and Karl Rove did not care who had to suffer on the
road to victory. Victims were a part of the
process. And homosexuals, he concluded, were the
perfect enemy," James Moore and Wayne Slater
wrote in this year's bestseller The Architect:
Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power.
Many conservative
evangelicals blame Foley for his personal immorality
and the disgrace he has brought onto the Republican Party.
But the
immorality and disgrace is how the Republican Party
unabashedly will use children and queers to reach its
political goal.
And the
institutional dysfunctionality of the Republican
Party's addiction to political dominance
reminds me of Lord Acton's famous statement:
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely."
The Republican
Party lost its soul to gain the world.
