Washington remains fixated on the emerging details of inappropriate contact that then-Congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla., had with former congressional pages. The latest revelations are the first report of an actual sexual encounter and the role that gay men played in trying to rein in Foley.
A former page told the Los Angeles Times ( Oct. 8 ) of electronic exchanges with Foley that began after he completed the page program and returned home. They eventually led to a single sexual encounter in the fall of 2000, after the young man had completed college and returned to Washington. He was 21 at the time.
The source, who now self-identifies as gay, agreed to talk only if he could remain anonymous, for fear that exposure would hurt his job prospects. He also allowed the reporter to view but not copy from his computer exchanges sent by Foley.
He confirmed that many pages referred to Foley as FFF—Florida Fag Foley. And he related an unannounced visit that he and three other pages made to Foley's Capitol Hill residence. The congressman let them in and was friendly, but there was no inappropriate activity.
In one of the subsequent instant messages ( IMs ) , Foley said, 'I always knew you were a player but I don't fool around with pages.' It buttresses Foley's claim that he never had sex with members of the page program, or with those who were under the legal age of consent, which is 16 in Washington, D.C., and much of the rest of the country.
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., became aware of Foley's IMs with a former page in 2000, according to an Oct. 9 report in The Washington Post. The direction those exchanges were taking made the young man 'feel uncomfortable,' and the congressman spoke to Foley about the matter.
Kolbe is the only openly gay Republican in Congress and is retiring at the end of this term. He is a former page himself and has served as a mentor to others in the program.
GAY STAFFERS
A pair of openly gay senior Republican staff members are at the center of the controversy and are certain to be interviewed during the House Ethics Committee and FBI investigations now underway.
Kirk Fordham served alternatively as Foley's congressional chief of staff and campaign manager for about a decade, and is gay. He tried to restrain the congressman's inappropriate contact with former pages, and in 2003 went to Scott Palmer, chief of staff to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. There is disagreement as to whether Fordham and Palmer met with Foley at that time.
Fordham was working as chief of staff to Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, when news of Foley's activities became public. Fordham resigned from that position on Oct. 4.
Jeff Trandahl is openly gay and served as Clerk of the House from 1999 to 2005, overseeing more than 300 employees, including the page program. The pages viewed him as a strict disciplinarian, according to reports by the Washington Post. He did not allow underage drinking and kept the teens in line.
In November 2005, after Rep Rodney Alexander, D-La., brought forward knowledge of Foley's inappropriate exchanges with a former page who served in Alexander's office, Trandahl and Rep. John M. Shimkus, R-Ill., chair of the page program, met with Foley and told him to cut off all contact with the teen.
Trandahl soon resigned from his clerking position. Some gay Republican staffers on the Hill fear a coming purge of their numbers.
Gay pundit Andrew Sullivan has known Trandahl for nearly 20 years. 'I know in the last couple of years in his job, he seemed extremely stressed and unhappy,' Sullivan wrote on his blog on Oct. 7.
'I also know he is one of the most honest, decent, ethical, kind, and principled men I've met in my life. My affection for him is as deep as my respect. He's a good man with integrity, always openly gay, and he always took his responsibilities very seriously.'
SPECTER OF HOMOPHOBIA
'It has been known for many years the Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex,' far-right political guru Paul Weyrich told National Public Radio.
'While pro-homosexual activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two,' asserted Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to spin the line that perhaps the Republican leadership had been negligent in confronting Foley for fear of being labeled as homophobic.
The Washington Post was having none of that. In an editorial in the early edition of the Oct. 8 paper but not in a later edition, it wrote, 'Given the GOP's public push for a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriages, it's ridiculous to imagine that some politically correct desire to avoid offending gay sensitivities restrained it from aggressively investigating the Foley matter.'
'One of the central tenets of anti-homosexual doctrine is the notion of 'recruitment'—that adult gay people lure young people into homosexuality as a way of increasing their numbers,' wrote Post columnist Eugene Robinson.
'The recruitment myth helps explain why social conservatives, who make up perhaps the most loyal and energetic segment of the Republican Party's base, are so up in arms,' he said. 'And that outrage, in turn, helps explain why the party has been so frantic all week, so uncharacteristically slow to come up with a game plan for responding to the scandal.'
While social conservatives have most blatantly tried to label Foley's conduct as pedophilia, the rhetoric of some Democrats hasn't been far behind.
'Our nation's children and their parents don't deserve to endure fear in our schools, and it is wrong to make children endure fear within the halls of Congress,' said Minnesota House candidate Patty Wetterling in delivering the official Democratic response to the President's weekly radio address.
'I'm not going to take a lecture on morality form a party that took hush money from a child predator,' said Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr., campaigning for the Senate in Tennessee. He was responding to an ad that he had attended a party with Playboy Playmates.
The controversy is expected to help Democratic Senate and House candidates, including several tight Congressional races in Illinois.
