What The Foley Mess Is Really All About

Like I said yesterday, I more or less would rather leave the whole Mark Foley scandal up to others to rant and rave about. I'd rather this blog be devoted more to purely sexual issues, (even sexually political issues) and I've felt sex really isn't the main issue, here. Let's face it. At the time the scandal broke, when Foley's "overly friendly" text messages and emails were all that we knew about the guy, that was enough to crucify the guy. If he hadn't touched any page at all, the inappropriateness of the messages, plus the long-time coverup of his activities by the G.O.P. House leadership, would have been enough of an outrage.

However, the Holy Terrors' spin machine, already going full speed, has kicked it into overdrive. Rather than wish this away, they're actually trying to frame the issue into one of their standard venomous talking points, "Gays are evil."

Earlier, I posted one particularly disgusting hypothesis from an asshole at Human Life International. The jerk claims homosexuals "reproduce" by molesting young boys, "turning them" gay as young, impressionable youths so they can likewise molest other kids, and so on.

Another pinhead, working for the oxymoronic "Accuracy In Media" group, wrote an article yesterday teeing off on gay Republicans and how they've infiltrated the party to promote their own agenda and how they must be rooted out "for the sake of honest and open government, not to mention protection of the children." I'm not posting the link (again, why encourage them?) yet because I've got more on this issue later.

Right now, I want to make one thing clear.

The Foley mess isn't about homsexuality.

It's about influence.

My dictionary defines "influence" as "the power of persons or things to affect others," "the ability of a person or group to produce effects indirectly by means of power based on wealth or high position, etc." "a person or thing that has influence."
The effect to be produced in this case (well, one of them, anyway) is getting off. That's what Foley was after. His influence was that as an older man, a supposed mentor to the pages in his care, a highly connected government official, someone to be admired, he was in a position to take advantage of his situation, exert his influence, and get what he wanted.

Now, people use influence all the time. Frankly, that's what it's there for. Politicians, police officers, parents, athletes, bullies, everyone uses what leverage they have, their influence, to get what they want.

People even use it for sex. I want to distinguish "influence" from "persuasion." Persuasion can be an intoxicating, erotically energetic experience. It's seduction. It's soft words and the right atmosphere, a daring caress here, a flash of skin there. Persuasion is a discussion, almost an argument, between two persons in a more or less equal position, equally matched. One persuades the other to his or her point of view.

Then, we have influence. The parties aren't in an equal position. One, through wealth, position, power, or all three, has the advantage. It's not a fair "argument."

Generally speaking, society frowns on using influence for sex. We don't like the notion of the casting couch, where a producer gets a starlet to have sex with him for a part in his latest production. We dislike hearing how a coach or a teacher had an affair with a student. We're especially troubled when the person being influenced is especially vulnerable, such as a teenager.

If Mark Foley had been busted texting a fellow gay Congressman, or even a longtime "friend" of about the same age, there might have been a stink, but nothing compared to what's going down now.

Why? Because Mark Foley had enormous influence, and he used it to get sex, not only from vulnerable people, but from especially vulnerable teenaged boys.

But it didn't stop there. He used his influence with fellow members of Congress to put him in and keep him in a position to take advantage of pages almost like a glutton left alone in a bakery.

It doesn't matter that Foley is gay. It matters that he was a Congressman, and that his victims were children.

Put it another way.

What if it came out that Mark Foley was texting and cyber-fucking and seducing young women and the Congressional leadership was covering it up?

Would it still be a scandal?