By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 10.12.06 @ 12:07AM
Precisely what were the Republicans to do about the Hon. Foley?
WASHINGTON -- The political news from Washington has become an
absolute epicurean delight. If I dine more sumptuously on the Foley
Follies I shall be in danger of becoming crapulent. Of course, we
need not dwell on the Hon. Foley. Days ago this pathetico became
only a peripheral figure in this delightful story.
Revolve this in your mind. The Democratic Party, that is to say,
the party of homosexual rights and homosexual marriage, is hounding
the Republican Party, that is the party of family values, for
extending due process to one of its own, the Hon. Foley, a
homosexual Republican congressman, once a Democrat and the founder
of south central Florida's Lettuce Patch Restaurant. Parents, even
vegetarian parents, will want to steer their young as far away as
possible from that cutely named restaurant.
Precisely what were the Republicans to do about the Hon. Foley?
On this the Democrats are unclear once their indignant oaths fall
silent. Apparently the dull House Speaker Dennis Hastert was
supposed to have been monitoring his colleagues on the Hill and
leapt to action at the first sign that one was sending dirty
messages to pages -- though it is only slowly becoming known even
by us readers of the vigilant American press who those pages are,
how old they were, and whether they were baiting Foley for
sport.
The Democrats have several other problems. They are the party
that let the Hon. Gerry Studds remain in Congress for over a decade
after he seduced a male page with booze. About the time he was
caught a Republican congressman from the Midwest was accused of
seducing a female page. The Republican was not renominated. And
then there is the Hon. Barney Frank, a beacon of virtue and
intelligence in the House of Representatives to this day. It was
discovered some years back that a homosexual friend of his was
running a house of ill-repute out of Frank's Washington apartment.
What did the Democrats do about these indiscretions?
Or for that matter, what are they going to do about the
discoveries of Jeffrey Lord? Writing in Spectator.org,
Lord reports on Rep. Nancy Pelosi marching in a 2001 gay pride
parade in San Francisco. Today Pelosi sounds like this: "Republican
leaders admitted to knowing about Mr. Foley's abhorrent behavior
for six months to a year and failed to protect children in their
trust." However, according to Lord, in that 2001 gay pride parade
who was striding a mere three spots away from Pelosi but Harry Hay,
founder of "The Mattachine Society," and a strong advocate of
man/boy love. Upon Hay's death in 2002 the North American Man/Boy
Love Association ran on its website several of his marmoreal
declarations, one being, "Because if the parents and friends of
gays are truly friends of gays, they should know from their gay
kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what
thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than
anything else in the world." Frankly I would have suggested that
shooting hoops is important too, but silly old me.
Now I think we can all agree that sending dirty e-mails to pages
whether 16, 18, or whatever their ages might be is reprehensible
and if done at taxpayers' expense still more reprehensible. I have
not seen the dirty-emails but I am told that some are as dirty as
Bill Clinton's phone sex, which, come to think of it, is another
sex scandal that our Democratic friends patiently indulged. Yet if
an election on national defense in time of war, homeland security,
the prosecution of terrorists, and a healthy economy is to turn on
the Republican leadership's treating Foley the way the Democratic
leadership treated Studds and Frank, I think we are all being a bit
frivolous.
While on the subject of the Republican leadership, may I ask why
the leadership has not yet made an issue of the abovementioned
instances of Democratic hypocrisy regarding sexual misbehavior?
They seem pretty obvious. Speaker Hastert has been as slow to
address the Democrats' abysmal failure to maintain standards on
Capitol Hill as he was in acting on Foley. Actually he has been as
slow to address this hypocrisy as Pelosi has been to apologize for
appearing with Hay in that gay pride parade.
topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton
