Was Mark Foley Created?

When six-term Florida Representative Mark Foley resigned last week and went into hiding the public’s reaction was predictable. It was his sexual orientation that made the event newsworthy.

But we as a society should be mature enough to recognize this is not an issue of Foley's sexual orientation beyond the fact that the actions took place between male individuals. The fact is, this was an adult man pursuing underage males, and that is a problem.

Why does it have to be adult man and underage male; why can't it just be an adult man pursuing a minor? Unfortunately we are perverted by the constant hatred and bigotry set primarily by the religious right, but also by intolerant individuals in our society. What ever happened to freedom? Well, they're right when they say “freedom isn't free.” They just happen to be wrong for all the wrong reasons.

Whether it is racial minorities, females, or now minority sexual orientations as the object of our hatred, we communalize based upon the commonalities of our despise. When we do this, we have a responsibility to identify the results of our actions and perceptions. The fact that there is such a thing as "coming out of the closet" is deplorable. That we have a society where a person feels more comfortable to live a lie than to live honestly based upon how they were naturally created by God is to admit to demonic influences in our lives.

We have in some ways come to accept the equality of "straight" men and women (an ugly term in and of itself) on the basis of race. What would we say of our success as a society if we knew that minorities felt more comfortable, and in greater numbers, did not reveal their race to us. This obviously being an impossibility, I am confident we would identify this as oppressive. We think it is just those nut balls in the south who randomly commit hate crimes. The American experiment shows again and again that bigotry against sexual minorities is a hate crime.

The risk of all bigotry is its inherent stupidity, uncritical nature, and tendency to perpetuate stereotypes. Hatred begets hate. People in America are able to educate themselves beyond regional mythology. This is no more true with racism than with sexism or any other "ism." There is, though, an educational barrier rarely mentioned in the discourse of ignorance. When society perpetuates the myth, fewer people are likely to become enlightened outside of that. The fact that America is a homophobic culture means most people are content to believe the way the story is told.

How would Mark Foley have acted if he did not feel his job was at stake with the truth--not about the revelations of what he did, but who he was. He struggled with the question of even running in this election over his sexual orientation. The risk of the stupidity of bigotry is that there are many Americans out there who will now bolster their claims that "homosexuality is a sin" based on the reality that Mark Foley engaged in pedophilia. Would he have if the American reality did not make it more acceptable for Foley to prey on underage boys than to ask a man his own age on a date? There are gay men and women working on Capitol Hill who remain "in the closet" who do not commit such acts. Last week, Brian O'Leary Bennett wrote a great web-exclusive Newsweek article titled "The GOP Closet" speaking about just this. American hatred did not make Mark Foley, nor did it make Mark Foley do what he did, but it did put Mark in a dark place where he believed the myth.

contact Kevin @ kevin.ressler@emu.edu