Foley And The Priest - Perverts In The Church And In The House

Joke Heard On A Train:

Q: What's the difference between a Catholic Priest and a Republican Congressman?
A: Their employer.

I was on a train from Boston to New York this morning. I had a copy of the Boston Metro with the AP headline- Priest: I Fondled Foley- on the seat next to me. At first I thought I was looking at a copy of The Onion.

A priest acknowledged yesterday that he had fondled Republican Congressman Mark Foley as a child. That the two had been naked together on several occasions and he'd given the boy massages. The priest insisted it wasn't abuse because Foley "seemed to like it." I thought he sounded like Matt Drudge who blamed Foley's indiscretions on his young victims. The Reverend Anthony Mercieca spoke by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, still on the Vatican dole. The father said that once, while on tranquilizers, he might have done something that Mr. Foley found inappropriate, but that he could not recall.

Then, like abusive parents, war profiteers, and Republicans everywhere the priest had the nerve to say, "Let bygones be bygones," absolving himself for any damage he may have caused. Predators always want you to remember the good times you had together and Republicans always say it's a waste of time to look at all the bad decisions they've made, we all must look ahead.

When the scandal first came out, that Foley had been preying on the young boys that came to Washington to work in the page program, many of the Bush Administration enablers on the Christian Right like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council took to the airwaves. They wanted Foley's misdeeds to be a liberal problem. They said what had happened, the stalking of young boys by a Republican Congressman who had led the fight against the group of predators to which he belonged, was a result of "tolerance and diversity." It was another infuriating bit of double speak and accountability dodging from the same people that insisted there were nuclear weapons in Iraq, then blamed British intelligence, then said we're losing the war not because of incompetence but because of the media.

But here's the thing, Foley the fondler who was also fondled, was a Republican Congressman. This was not a man exposed to tolerance and diversity but rather a man who a priest had exposed himself to. The priest, a predator and a mentor, who is expected not to marry and is also not allowed sexual relations.

Q: What's does a Catholic Priest and a Republican Congressman have in common?
A: They're both sexually repressed.

What's obvious, as obvious as the fact that there was a coverup from the Speaker's office and we're losing in Iraq, is that Mark Foley's unpardonable actions were not the result of tolerance. Rather, they stemmed from shame and a culture that placed restraint above truth. But the truth wills out. When people are ashamed to communicate their desires they often end up in unsafe situations where they are either the victim or the victimizer. The problem is not the desire, the problem is how the priest and the congressman expressed their desire. It's not OK for grown men to fondle naked children. But if Mark Foley hadn't repressed his homosexuality and desire for young boys he could have found a lover closer to his own age who would have dressed up in a little school boy outfit and bent over the desk for a few whacks from the schoolmaster's paddle. If Mark Foley had been less repressed he could have sought a healthy way to explore his desires that didn't involve the victimizing of adolescents. He could have led a helpful and satisfying life and if he was willing to talk about it he could have gotten help for any urges that could not be pursued legally.

Todays headline, that a priest fondled Foley, does not provide any excuse for Foley's behavior. But it does provide yet another strong link between those that deny their sexual urges and the perpatrators of sex crimes. It's the same reason you have so many more unwanted pregnancies in school districts focusing on abstinence only instead of sex education and contraception. If we want to cut down on the behaviors that rocked the Catholic Church in recent years and the Republican Party in the past couple of months, if we really want to protect our children from the perverts in the church and the Republican party, the first thing we should do is start being more honest and open about our desires. We need to be more tolerant, more diverse, and fight back against the forces that would bundle the gains of the enlightenment inside a blanket of fundamentalism.

See also How Mark Foley Represents The Entire Republican Party

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Stephen Elliott is the author of the story collection My Girlfriend Comes To The City And Beats Me Up

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