It’s really simple, bozos: we libruls think it’s fine if you’re gay or straight. But either way, being a sexual predator is wrong, and minors should be protected from adults who would sexually prey on them.
Just because YOU idiots can’t distinguish between gays and pedophiles, that’s YOUR sick problem. Don’t try to palm it off on anyone else.
My interpretation:
The editors seem upset that the dems are jumping all over Hastert for not doing enough after the initial email, which the editors say was only mildly inappropriate. They [the editors] say that there was no reason to jump to conclusions just because Foley is gay. In retrospect, banning him from contact with pages would have been a good thing, but automatically assuming that he’d perform further sketchiness could only have been a result of bad assumptions about gays: “…if that’s the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant.”
Maybe I’m not reading this in context. While I do read the wsj regularly, I don’t really remember if they have a long history of linking gay = predator. If they do, then perhaps my interpretation is a bit too generous.
It would be just as wrong if this congressreptile had a history of advances toward young women. Only less hypocritical.
I haven’t seen Dem responses to this, but I would suppose that what they are attacking is inappropriate advances toward those who did not appreciate it: sexual orientation is a red herring.* I’d be surprised if they engaged in gay-bashing at all.
Because the ages of the pages are old enough, it’s a different issue than the argument that those who are attracted to men are not more likely to prey on young boys.
For that matter, it’s a specious argument to claim that those that are pedophiles will always prey upon children, but that’s another story.
But there’s a difference between not supporting certain behavior and not supporting stereotyping of ill-supported accusations of unrelated behavior.
*italics emphasizing differences between that and another, not-fully-supported-by-democrats sexual happening in Washington a couple years back.
What’s the problem with gay scoutmasters unless gay = predator?
The people the WSJ describes as our “cultural elite” are opposed to discrimination against gays. Not against predators; against gays. So the only context in which “…if that’s the standard, we should all admit we are returning to a rule of conduct that our cultural elite long ago abandoned as intolerant” makes sense is if gays and sexual predators are being equated, given that the “standard” is to react with dispatch to suggestions that one might have a sexual predator in a position with easy access to his preferred prey.
So… you’re the pubbies and you’ve got incipient problem with a crypto-gay congressman who’s maybe a little too interested in pretty young male pages. All you’ve got as hard evidence is some borderline “too friendly” emails, but nothing over the top at this point.
What are your options at that point with just the borderline emails as evidence.?
Turn the sensitivity dial on the inappropriateness meter up to 11 and cry “Faggot Pedophile out!”?
Go to him privately, and tell him to cut it out?
What do you do with an out of control horny, gay Congressman?
Choice 1: hand over the info you have to whatever local agency is responsible for looking into child-abuse-related allegations, and let them decide if it’s worth pursuing. They’re the pros; you’ve given it to them; you’ve done your duty.
Choice 2: do your own quiet investigation to see if these emails are an outlier, or the tip of the iceberg. At a minimum, send an email to all pages that allegations have surfaced that at least one member of Congress is hitting on them, and give them a way to anonymously report any instances they’ve experienced or observed of Congresspersons getting a bit too close to them. Ask the persons running the day-to-day operations of the page program if there are any Congresspersons they have felt a need to warn the pages about, and again, give them a way to reply anonymously. Do the same with Congressional staffers in Foley’s office and on his committees’ staff.
This isn’t rocket science. But once you know about the icky emails, you can’t just ignore them, or (first cousin to ignore) ask Foley if he’s being a bad boy, and conclude your ‘investigation’ when he says No.
I think the OP got it right this time. The editorial, based on it’s last paragrpah, is saying that our society should put restrcitions on the interactions gay adults have with minor children. And I think the WSJ is stretching things more than a bit when it tries to point out hypocracy within the “cultural elite” for wanting to know what Hastert knew and when he knew it. The initial e-mails were not sexually explicit, but a red flag should have gone up when Foley asked the teenager to send him a picture. That has nothing to do with being gay or straight-- a red flag would’ve gone up if the page had been a girl, too.
In a very tortured way, the WSJ is saying: See, we told you that you need to watch gays when they have access to children, as they do in the Boy Scouts. Hastert should indeed have done more than just say Knock it off to Foley when he saw the request for a picture. It has nothing to do with whether Foley is gay or not, it’s just not the kind of behavior we expect of adults who are in charge of supervising our children.
But that’s exactly the point. How far are you really going to go going to go with just the initial emails? You seem to be claiming that those initial “too friendly” emails, in and of themselves, were sufficient to justify starting up a significant trawling operation to look for evidence of pedophile tendencies. Those emails (what I’m seen of them) were not conclusive of anything that would realistically justify that level of response. A Congressman asking for a page’s picture does not (IMO) necessarily peg the Pedo-Meter.
Newt Gingrich made the same parallel. He defends the Republicans’ decision to handle the matter delicately by saying that if they *had * confronted Foley about it, the media would have accused them of gay bashing. Which is monstrously absurd: to suggest that the media would have *defended *Foley as a gay civil rights issue. Has Gingrich lost it?
Yea, that’s the question I have about all of this. These pages are, what, 16, 17, 18 years old? I’m not defending Foley because he refuses to use book markers, but isn’t this more of a case of, shit, I can’t remember the term, ephephilia or something like that, rather than true pedophilia? Is the term Pedophile being used in this case for it’s shock value by political opportunists and opponents?
In any event, I don’t think Mr. Foley belongs in Congress, or, for that matter, in AA. Depending on what is actually proven to have occurred, jail seems like it might be more appropriate.
Come on, people, can’t you see the up side here? Finally, the Republicans are arguing that they were motivated by their inherent sense of fairness and sensitivity toward gays! :rolleyes: Of course, it was to be expected that The National Review is joining in on this idiocy.
I think this is a case of intentional failure to comprehend what was written, for obvious reasons.
I read this passage:
The point the author is making here, to me, seems to be, “What should the Republicans have done? They knew Foley was gay, and a little bit too friendly, does that mean they should instantly accuse him of being a predator?” The author is spot-on that yes, most social liberals would consider it prejudice to label someone a sexual predator simply because they were gay and friendly towards a page in emails.
I seriously am not reading in to this that the author really does think gays shouldn’t be around young children, or teenagers. It just seems the author is trying to identify what he sees as a hypocrisy on behalf of Democrats.
I think his problem is not how he views gays, or the Boy Scouts of America issue, but how he interprets the Foley issue. There’s a big difference between a gay man being “friendly” towards a teenage boy and a gay man being “friendly” towards a teenage boy. Persons who are expected to lead a country, like congressmen for example, should be expected to have the ability to read between the lines. For example, I think it’s very obvious, just from my personal experience when I was a High School student when a male teacher is being “friendly” with a female student simply because he’s a nice, supportive teacher and when the teacher is being somewhat of a pervert. I’m sure that some people here went to High Schools where you never got the “pervert” vibe from any teacher, but I wasn’t one of those, there was at least one male teacher I remember who definitely showed an inappropriate “friendliness” with the female students.
It’s a delicate issue when you have situations like that. Because some people have certain personality traits that can make their intentions seem different than what they actually are. So you don’t want to ruin someones life just because you’ve misinterpreted how they are acting. What you should do, however, is be sure if specific evidence of misconduct in these regards come up, investigate.
I’d agree if the Republican leadership had just heard rumors that “Foley has been a little too friendly with the pages” it’d be hypocritical to complain that Foley wasn’t investigated in such a situation. In such a situation the only grounds for looking in to Foley would have been “he’s gay, and I hear rumors he’s lusting after teenage pages.” But in this specific case, it wasn’t rumor or innuendo, it was an email which, I understand there was a copy of, meaning a reasonable person should investigate that email and try to discover if it crossed the line. And if it didn’t, but gave off an inappropriate vibe, I’d expect someone to investigate into the matter further and see if there were more emails, or any other sort of inappropriate conduct.
I would definitely…definitely!…cancel my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. If I had such. Could cancel my father’s subscription, but that might be a bad idea. He’s still a bit miffed about my pointing and laughing at his Ann Coulter book.
Well, that’s why there’s Choice 1 - just turn the matter over to the people whose job it is to make the call with something like this.
But if you don’t, if you decide to deal with this in house, you’ve got a greater burden to err on the side of caution, because you don’t know what you’re doing.
Here are the initial emails, in their entirety. (pp.4-8 of the PDF.) You make the call. I’m with John Mace - they sure set off my Perv-O-Meter.
Who the hell is saying that Hastert should have made the accusations in a press conference? Obviously the investigation needed to be low key and quiet. Just as obviously, the other two members of the committee supervising pages should have been told.
These guys seem to have the mindset that unless someone hands them all the evidence on a platter, there is no need to investigate. They’re incurious and lazy, whether it be emails to pages or threats of terrorist attacks.