Ah. But it really wasn't about outing gay Republicans...Follow

Except that the IM's were *not* sent to the 16 year old that everyone talks about. The IM's were sent to an 18 year old.

Starting to see the problem? You've got two very different things being (deliberately IMO) confused into one. As a result, most people believe that Foley's behavior toward the 16 year old was represented by the IMs. It's not illegal or even unethical to engage in sexually explicit conversations with an adult. It's also not illegal or unethical to ask a minor how he's doing, or what he'd like for his birthday. The second thing *only* appears bad when put in the context of the other. But the two have nothing to do with eachother aside from the fact that Foley was involved in both things.


It would be like me saying that a conversation you had with a teenager today is pedophilia because you had a conversation with an adult last month that included explicit sexual content. Isn't that absurd? Yeah. It is...

For anyone curious. Here's the transcripts of Foley's emails. Stripping out the top bits off the pdf, which contain reaction after the fact, here's the *actual* emails that were sent to the 16 year old:


Email 1


Email 2


Email 3


Email 4



I assume that some bits were cut out, with the only the bits of interest left in.

Um... I see nothing overtly sexual in any of those. You *can* interpret them sexually. Certainly, he's being "overly friendly" to this guy. But nothing even remotely like the IM transcripts we seem to hear all about. Heck. Just trying to find these email transcripts, I had to skip over dozens of sites that mentioned the "Foley email scandal", but had the IM transcripts instead.


And on the subject of the IMs, read what this site has to say. This is the same thing that Drudge reported as well.

Point being that the whole thing is a huge batch of *nothing*. And after you pull out the hype and the exageration and the deliberate mixing of terms, dates, emails and IMs, and ages, you end up with a gay man who did nothing wrong other then be gay. And be Republican of course...

Edited, Oct 18th 2006 at 7:29pm PDT by gbaji

Yes. Do you like watersports?

Please include a link to a source. Because unless you actually know the people involved, how can I know the age of the person involed in this IM? Someone saying the other side was underaged does not make it so. So far, the only two sources I've seen was the IM sequence and emails reported by ABC. Nothing else has been confirmed to my knowledge, and for all I know could be some clever bloggers idea of a really funny joke...



Again. I know nothing of this particular IM. We don't know his real age. And given that ABC made a not so subtle attempt to conceal the fact that the last "underaged page" was in fact 18 at the time of the IM tends to make me distrustful of some random quoting of an IM conversation in this case.

Give me a source and a link. I'll figure out for myself to what degree the information is legitimate.



Ok. Fair enough. However, that can just as easily been seen as someone having "boundaries". First off, let's clear the pedophilia thing off the table. No one is suggesting that Foley engaged in any sort of sexual behavior with a pre-adolescent. So what we're really talking about is sexual conduct with a minor (totally different legal issue btw). We somewhat arbitrarily set a legal age at which a teen can consent to sex. This has nothing to do with any sort of mental aberration or biological weirdness.

Can we agree that an adult male looking at an 8 year old female and thinking "I'd really love to get into her pants", has some serious mental problems, but an adult male looking at a 16 year old female and thinking "Wow. She's really hot. Too bad she's 16" is pretty much a normal adult male? Is that really any different then Foley in this case (aside from the homosexuality)? If we accept that homosexuality is not inherently "wrong", then a homosexual male finding a 16 year old male attractive is *also* not wrong.

It becomes wrong in our society if he actually does something. We don't have a thought police. You have to actually engage in some kind of sexual activity with a minor in order to have broken the law. Thus, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a gay male having a friendly conversation with a 16 year old male, and also having sex with an 18 year old male. Even if you argue that Foley was "setting up" potential lovers once they turned 18 and digging through the pool of male pages to find them, it's still shows that he applied a set of sexual boundaries to his behavior that is in line with the legal boundaries of our society. Frankly, I'm not sure how you can condemn him for that. You can say it's "creepy" maybe. But it's not illegal.


The point is that biologically there's nothing particularly distinguishable between a 16 year old and an 18 year old. Both are biologically "adults". Therefore, there's nothing abnormal for any other adult to find attractive. The only distinction is a somewhat arbitrary legal distinction. Our law specifically places an age at which it is legal for another adult to engage in sex with that person. The age varies (note that in DC is *is* 16, but lets assume it's 18 for the sake of this argument), but it is a very specific demarcation point. Younger then that age and an adult could go to jail for engaging in sexual contact, older then that age, even by a single day, and it's completely legal.

Arbitrary? Yeah. But that's an issue with the law. Not Foley. Your argument is kinda like saying we should find fault with people who drive *exactly* the speed limit. After all, clearly they are traveling at the highest speed they can without going over the legal limit, and that implies that they want to speed, but are staying just under the limit so as to avoid legal prosecution. Shouldn't they drive slower so as to be safer and meet the "spirit" of the speed limit laws? Sure. But legally, if I can drive 65 mph, and I'm going exactly 65mph, then I'm fine. Same deal with Foley. If the law puts the age of consent at 18, and Foley waits until someone turns 18 before engaging in sexual behavior with them, then that's legal.

Arguing otherwise is silly. Foley followed the law. Maybe you expect your representatives in Congress to do more (much as you might think driving slower then the speed limit is better for public safety), but then it's purely a matter between Foley and his own constituents. Where's the "scandal" here? By historical measurement, this *should* be a really minor thing. There's a whole lot of smoke, but not really any fire.

Ah bhodi, reading this brings back the memories for me.

Typical gbaji bullshiting. If he doesn't see it, it doesn't exist. Nothing new here. His ability to deny reality achieves Bush-ian proportions. He's doing "a heck of a job" defending pedophiles, date rapers, the non-existance of the pre-war National Intelligence Estimate....

I have to admit that I'm a bit upset that our elected officials think that an ellipse is the proper way to end a sentance. And that they don't understand capitalization or apostrophes.

As a source? Hell no. You'd be much better off going with the original ABC News story which was the cite in Wikipedia anyway.Erm, the legal drinking age is 21. I'm hardly in Gbaji's camp on all this but you could get the same response from a 19 year old.

Edited, Oct 18th 2006 at 10:53pm PDT by Jophiel

Wow. Someone making gbaji look almost reasonable.

I'd have never thought...

Sure. But, as I indicated earlier, that's really between Foley and his constituents. And since Foley resigned, that issue is really somewhat moot. The point I've been getting at is that it seems as though the current "attack" is to try to drive a wedge between those "most folks" (aka: conservative voters) and their politicians, not so much on the issue of age, but over the issue of homosexuality itself. It's certainly a morals issue, but over which issue?

I'm simply suggesting that had Foley been heterosexual and the teens involved female (or had he just been a Democrat), it's unlikely he would have resigned so quickly, nor would this scandal have gotten nearly as much action as it has. The question you have to ask yourself is whether the assumption is that the "folks" would be more shocked about a Congressman flirting with teens and engaging in sexual acts with "young adults", or over the fact that he's gay. While that's certainly debatable, I'm firmly of the belief that Foley resigned more over the sex of the teens then their ages.

Having known a very close friend of mine who struggled with his homosexuality for many years, I know pretty well how difficult it can be for those in that situation. The decision to come out of the closet is not an easy one and those transitioning from in to out often take other drastic measures along the way. The friend in question literally broke off all contact with anyone he'd known prior to coming out. He was simply so uncomfortable with the issue that he didn't want to see, hear, or talk to anyone he'd known prior to coming out.

So no. I don't find it unlikely at all that Foley's decision to resign had more to do with being outted as homosexual then with the ages of those he was attracted to. In fact, I find it to be the most likely reason. Furthermore, I think that those that did this *knew* that Foley was that uncomfortable with his sexuality being public and that the issue of teens was basically a veneer cast over the real objective of outting him.

You can disagree with me on this, but given that the FBI was handed the same emails and IMs and basically said: "We don't see a crime here", you've got to question the motives behind tossing it to the media as a second action.




I'm not sure how you get from "adult male being attracted to 16-21 year old males" to pulling aside underoos and fondling hairless packages. Aren't you still trying to equate this to pedophilia? Isn't that a stretch? Can we please stop with this? Unless you're arguing that homosexuals are somehow inherently linked to being attracted to pre-adolescent males? But then that ties right back to my original argument, doesn't it (and says something more about your own prejudices then anything else)?




Correct. And based on the evidence I've seen so far, Foley abided by those laws. He did not have sex with any minors.

Why bring this up? Show me where he violated the law and your point makes sense.



Um. My point is that since there isn't any illegality so far found in Foley's actions, then it's down really to a moral judgement about his actions and not a legal one. And on that moral judgement, I believe that the agenda was more about his homosexuality then his preference for young partners.

Get it? If he'd actually broken some laws, then I could look at the decision to go public with his actions and accept that the reason for doing so was to "protect children". But as more and more information and facts are coming out, and it's turning out that he didn't actually do anything illegal with regards to age and sex, then I've got to wonder why this was pushed out into the media in the first place. And the first obvious reason is that they knew Foley was sensitive about his sexuality, and that by doing this in a way that had at least the appearance of protecting children (again, note the way ABC uses very vague references to age to make it seem like the worse IMs involved minors when they actually didn't), they could out him without it looking obvious that they were simply outting a gay republican.

The fact that the next target (aside from Hastert in relation to Foley) is another in the closet gay republican kinda supports my theory, don't you think?

And, again, this is where you are wrong. Any elected official hitting on an underaged party quite properly would be subject to this sort of scrutiny and thank God for it.

sloppy yawn

Yes, because him resigning is doing nothing about it. You don't think he would have resigned if he thought his fellow Republicans would have backed him to stay do ya?