I know I'm rather late in commenting on the Mark Foley scandal, but it's taken me this long to quit laughing. This is really what they call the chickens coming home to roost, now isn't it? Force of habit compels me to cheer for any revelation that exposes hypocrisy, even more so where it causes problems for the Republican party.
In all seriousness, however, I'd like to express what I think is probably a minority opinion on the matter, and this is that I feel sorry for Foley in a way, and I also think he did the right thing in resigning, and should perhaps even be commended for it. Of course, let's not get carried away: the gravity of his offense shouldn't be minimized, as it certainly did represent a threat to the developing sexuality of these young boys, who shouldn't have had to go through such an experience. But Foley could have just lied and stonewalled, and the Republican leadership--and probably the press as well--would have facilitated him in this. Foley may indeed have more to hide, but I rather doubt it; he had to know that his show of weakness in resigning would only embolden the press and the Democrats to come after him that much harder. Instead, he came clean. And look at how he jumped at the chance to resign. He was tired of living a lie. Foley's behavior, as reprehensible as it was, represented a cry for help, and I doubt that he'll do it again. Now that he's out of the closet--where, lets face it, the repressive values of the Republican party put him--he can go on to have a healthy relationship with another adult of whatever sex he chooses.
On the other hand, I have little in the way of praise for Reps. Dennis Hastert and Tom Reynolds, who conspired to cover up Foley's action, and who continue to engage in a cover-up of their own knowledge of the situation. But not only are they guilty of a cover-up, these Republican congressmen--whose party ostensibly stands for "family values" and the like--facilitated and enabled Foley's behavior for years. Neither of these men, nor apparently anyone else in the Republican party, even had the sense to set Foley down and have a talk with him. They weren't doing Foley any favors, that's for sure. Most likely their indifference merely caused him to behave all the more outrageously. For even once he had been caught, if Foley had wanted to get off scott free, all he had to do was follow the example of these men and stonewall: most likely the worst penalty they'll suffer is to be voted out of office.
Which brings us to another thing that's been said: that Democrats would have done the same as the Republicans, engaged in the same kind of cover-up. Well, maybe, but there's also a sense in which this couldn't have happened in the first place in the Democratic party. For no one in the Democratic party would have objected to Foley's homosexuality; he wouldn't have had to be in the closet, in other words. He could have openly carried on an affair with a man; or, if indeed he did stray in the direction of aberrant sexuality, there would have been less hesitancy in setting him straight. For all it's faults, in the Democratic party there is greater openness about where the line is drawn.
And we should never forget that Foley's e-mails pale in comparison with what President Bush is doing. Foley didn't lie about WMDs to get us into an un-winnable war, he didn't authorize torture and illegal imprisonment, and he didn't engage in warrantless searches of phone and bank records. So let's put this scandal in perspective: yes, Foley sexually harassed under-age teenagers, but he didn't rape them--at least we have no evidence of that yet--and he certainly didn't drop bombs on their heads and kill them. We can't allow ourselves to lose sight of the larger issues here.
Which brings me to a crisis of conscience analogous to Foley's: that of Sergeant Ricky Clousing. Clousing's case is hardly front page news (I learned of it only recently in an article on page 16 of the New York Times: A Soldier Hoped to Do Good But Was Changed by War, Laurie Goodstein, Oct. 13, 2006), but to my mind it's actually more significant than the Foley scandal. Briefly, Clousing had a born-again experience that led him enlist to fight in Iraq in order to serve his God and his country. In Iraq, however, he witnessed atrocities being committed by his fellow soldiers and came to the conclusion that the war contradicted both his Christian principals and the interests of America. Denied a graceful way out--his councilors told him to pretend to be gay--Clousing subsequently went AWOL for a time, then finally turned himself in, after which he was court-martialed and sentenced to 11 months of confinement.
There are several similarities in the two cases: both Foley and Clousing are conservatives: one a Republican, the other a born-again Christian and a patriot. They were both living a lie: in Clousing's case it's the lie that Christianity--and the interests of freedom and democracy--can be reconciled with killing innocent people. They both have their enablers: for Clousing there were no shortage of chaplains and councilors and friends who told him it was perfectly OK to kill people in the name of God and country, and that what was most important was to continue to follow orders. The difference is that the behavior they enabled for Clousing was killing people, or at least participating in an unjust war that resulted--is still resulting--in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. That's a lot worse than sending them annoying e-mails, however unwelcome and sexually threatening.
Don't misunderstand me: I don't want to let Clousing, or Foley for that matter, off the hook. They are certainly morally culpable, not only for their own actions, but for their collusion in the larger atrocities of the Bush administration. Bush couldn't get away with what he's doing were it not for people like Foley (and Hastert and Reynolds) in congress. He also couldn't get away with killing Iraqis if he didn't have people like Clousing on the ground to pull the trigger. So what I'd like to say to both Republicans and the soldiers in Iraq is: come clean about what's going on. Our country is being hijacked and we need someone to stand up to this weird cabal that's holed up in the White House. People of conscience on both the left and the right need to quit cooperating in the destruction of the values they hold dear.