# Rep. Mark Foley resigns over e-mails to teenage boys -- repercussions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 30, 2006, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735 "2006-09-30T14:28:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/121 "2006-10-02T17:57:25Z")
Wow, this is entering Chris Hansen Dateline NBC territory. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Ah, who am I kidding? Of course I would. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/122 "2006-10-02T18:07:06Z")
Personally, don’t much care if the legal case against Mr. Foley proceeds further or no. He has been punished quite sufficiently in my estimation. I want the enablers. I want the men who turned a blind eye to this, for reasons of politics. I want the men who knew, or should have known, were _duty bound_ to know. So far, Mr. Hastert, Mr. Reynolds, and others have a lot of questions to answer. And I’ll be goddamned if I’ll be patient. I am not willing to be stalled on this, given assurances of thorough investigations at some point in the harmless future. Anyone going to the polls has a right to know who they are voting for. And I’m not hearing any crap about how long this stuff takes, ABC news found these incriminating IM’s in a matter of days! \* Days\*, mind you! Has it escaped my attention that this is a potential electoral catastrophe for Pubbies? Not in the slightest. I am perfectly willing to wrap myself in the cloak of piety and outraged purity that the Pubbies have worn for so long. Well, perhaps a different one, that one is a bit threadbare, and stained with suspicious bodily fluids. Gross. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/123 "2006-10-02T18:14:49Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] So I left open the possibility, from a purely common-sense perspective, that the youth’s probable status as legally able to consent to sex in the District of Columbia might somehow be a mitigating factor. [/quote] Not from a legal perspective, althogh I suppose it might influence the exercise of discretion by the prosecutor. > [@](#): > > Or would, under the AWA, sexual contact itself without any solicitation by wire, also be a Federal offense? If so, does this mean the Federal law completely trumps D.C. law, and the laws of any other state where the AoC is under 18? No, the Act does not (and cannot) criminalize sexual contact itself, if there is no interstate component. (Of course, Congress ultimately writes the laws for DC, but putting that distraction aside for a moment…) This means you’re free to try to hook up with a 16- or 17-year-old face-to-face in a state that has an age of consent of 16, but you may not use the Internet to facilitate such hookups unless your target is 18. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/124 "2006-10-02T18:20:49Z")
Stuff like that tends to make my head hurt a little. Of course, I read it on the page and it makes all the literal sense in the world, but conceptually it just doesn’t compute. Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/125 "2006-10-02T18:43:06Z")
Yeah, certainly doesn’t make sense. Essentially, anything that gets us into a situation in which you can have sex with kids as long as you don’t talk about it over the internet is pure crazypants. I’m not in favor of making it easier to solicit kids online, but at the very least, it should be as hard or equally hard to have sex with them than it is to solicit them in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/126 "2006-10-02T19:37:33Z")
It might be instructive to look at what happened back in the 1980s. In 1983, Rep. Gerry Studds was found to have had sexual relations with a 17-year-old male page. No Internet in those days, of course, and Studds defended the conduct as consensual. He was re-elected and continued to be so until he retired in 1994. There was no violation of law. During the same investigation, Rep. Dan Crane also admitted to having sex with a page – a 17-year-old girl. He was also not charged with a crime, although the voters in his district were far less forgiving; he was kicked out by the voters in 1984. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/127 "2006-10-02T19:40:56Z")
I guess Foley may have even more to fear from FL Law. From [here](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/washington/02legal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin): > [@](#): > > In the past, legal experts said, prosecutors have exercised a great deal of discretion in deciding whether to pursue such cases. In the absence of physical contact, said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, some prosecutors reviewing e-mail messages like Mr. Foley’s “could say, ‘This is really gross, I need to take a shower,’ but not charge” the sender with a crime. > > But Professor Berman added, “There are cases in which people have done stuff that is not significantly worse and have had the book thrown at them.” > > … > > A Florida law makes it a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, to transmit “material harmful to minors by electronic device.” The law defines the material broadly to include descriptions of “nudity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement.” As for others: > [@](#): > > And Mr. Foley is not the only person who could possibly face prosecution, Professor Berman said. “If there were people who knew about him or protected him,” he said, “some sort of complicity or conspiracy charge is certainly viable.” ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/128 "2006-10-02T19:42:18Z")
[QUOTE=Apos] Yeah, certainly doesn’t make sense. Essentially, anything that gets us into a situation in which you can have sex with kids as long as you don’t talk about it over the internet is pure crazypants. I’m not in favor of making it easier to solicit kids online, but at the very least, it should be as hard or equally hard to have sex with them than it is to solicit them in the first place. [/QUOTE] I don’t necessarily agree. The Internet is a medium that may make it easier to groom a target for sexual contact. There are relatively few social or employment circumstances that place underage teens and fifty-plus year olds in close, unmonitored proximity. We may as a society decide to regulate Internet contact more rigidly than face-to-face contact for that reason alone. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/129 "2006-10-02T19:56:27Z")
Yeah, but in simple terms, it is a crime to use the internet to solicit activity that is not a crime. If hot man-on-16-year-old-boy love isn’t illegal, one might ask, what’s the problem? And if there is a problem, how can having the AoC be 16 instead of 18 make any sense? Seems to me the standards informing AoC law and the AWA are quite different in their assumptions of propriety, so there’s considerable logical difficulty, in my mind, with the real-world outcome. My middle-aged neighbor can boink my sophomore in high school because they know each other, but a guy in the next town can’t because he’ll have to use an internet chat board or somesuch to do what my neighbor could face-to-face. Seems a little nutty to me. If one is in the dubious practice of supposing there’s some deep moral principle behind the laws of the land, AoC says it’s sort of OK, and AWA say’s it’s despicable. ---
**Author:** ![Rachm\_Qoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@Rachm\_Qoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachm_Qoch)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/130 "2006-10-02T21:01:57Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] I wonder the same. As pointed out in the related [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=390300&page=1&pp=50) , the Adam Walsh Act may have made things very difficult for Foley: _\_ [/QUOTE] The Adam Walsh Act was enacted just a few months ago – from what I gather, the IM’s are a few years old. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/131 "2006-10-02T21:05:54Z")
Oh! I thought a lot of this was fairly recent. N/M then. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/132 "2006-10-02T21:15:43Z")
Did the I/Ms pre-date relevant state laws which also make such solicitation over the internets illegal? ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/133 "2006-10-02T21:16:12Z")
[Tony Snow](http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003189765) shrugs it off as just some “naughty e-mails”: > [@](#): > > Look, I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill and there have been other scandals as you know that have been more than simply naughty e-mails. > > \ > > I’ll let you or the unnamed people draw the conclusions. I’m going to stick by my point which is that I think we have to take care of these kids. Won’t somebody think if the children? Please, please everybody - don’t think of _anything else_ but the children!! ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/134 "2006-10-02T21:35:56Z")
> [@Tony Snow](#): > > Look, I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill and there have been other scandals as you know that have been more than simply naughty e-mails. “Democratic scandals…Democratic scandals…Stubbs…Frank…remember the Democratic scandals…for at least another month and change…” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/135 "2006-10-02T21:41:17Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] I want the enablers. I want the men who turned a blind eye to this, for reasons of politics. I want the men who knew, or should have known, were _duty bound_ to know. So far, Mr. Hastert, Mr. Reynolds, and others have a lot of questions to answer. [/QUOTE] Me too. I [mentioned in the other thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7830664&postcount=161) that Hastert’s call for an investigation was carefully worded to limit the investigation to the IM conversations and exclude the emails, which would of course exclude not only his sorry ass, but those of Reynolds, Boehner, Shimkus, etc. from investigation. I [also posted in the other thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7828707&postcount=130) about how Foley’s interest in teenage boys (especially pages) seemed to be an open secret in the GOP caucus, going back as far as 2001, apparently. Seems there’s a lot of enabling, covering-up, and CYA going on. AFAIAC, one bad apple is just one bad apple; if Foley had been so circumspect about his predilection that nobody’d known before last week (except a few pages, of course), then it wouldn’t have anything to do with the GOP, other than the probable loss of the one seat in a mildly GOP district. (53-47 Bush in 2000; 54-46 Bush in 2004.) But when you get most of the House leadership seeing those emails that weren’t overtly sexual, but were certainly sleazy enough to make you wonder, and deciding they were satisfied when Foley told them, Scout’s honor, nothing bad’s happening here, then it’s a GOP problem. It’s hard to say the House leadership isn’t particularly representative of the party as an institution. ---
**Author:** ![Rachm\_Qoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@Rachm\_Qoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachm_Qoch)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/136 "2006-10-02T21:42:44Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] Our story so far: Hastert and Boner are tangled up in each others storyline. [/QUOTE] Clearly they need to get on the same page. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/137 "2006-10-02T21:43:20Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] I guess Foley may have even more to fear from FL Law. [/QUOTE] Was Foley in Florida when the IM’s/emails were sent? Or was he in DC? ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/138 "2006-10-02T21:45:45Z")
Were any of them to a FL youth? A NYT article brought the FL law up, so I guess I assumed it was relevant somehow, but that may have been a poor assumption, I dunno. I’m really getting scatterbrained with this now because I can’t read in any depth, so maybe I should just knock it off for a while until I can pay attention. ---
**Author:** ![Rachm\_Qoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a8b319/32.png) [@Rachm\_Qoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachm_Qoch)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/139 "2006-10-02T21:52:14Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] Were any of them to a FL youth? A NYT article brought the FL law up, so I guess I assumed it was relevant somehow, but that may have been a poor assumption, I dunno. I’m really getting scatterbrained with this now because I can’t read in any depth, so maybe I should just knock it off for a while until I can pay attention. [/QUOTE] In one email from his aol account he states he’s in Florida. In another, North Carolina, so NC law might be applicable as well. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735/140 "2006-10-02T22:13:27Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] I don’t necessarily agree. The Internet is a medium that may make it easier to groom a target for sexual contact. There are relatively few social or employment circumstances that place underage teens and fifty-plus year olds in close, unmonitored proximity. We may as a society decide to regulate Internet contact more rigidly than face-to-face contact for that reason alone. [/QUOTE] We’re not talking about just face to face contact: we’re talking about a rather more intense form of contact. We are talking about having SEX with the kids in question. It’s one thing to specially penalize the internet as a form of speech, which, while you provide a paper-thin defense of, is at least sane. It’s quite another to penalize someone for chatting up a young person being a crime when actually having sex with them is not. Any system law which arrests one man for sexually suggestive IMs to a 16 year old, but finds another man to be totally in the clear for having sex with that same 16 year old is de facto crazytown bonkers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rep-mark-foley-resigns-over-e-mails-to-teenage-boys-repercussions/374735.md?page=8)