Ah, yes --Values

Strange how the Republicans keep falling afoul of family values. I hadn't thought much of this story when it first appeared at AmericaBlog yesterday, simply because John Aravosis has a tendency toward shrillness and it simply didn't look, from the e-mails he published, that there was much there. Apparently there was enough:

Here's the original post. Based on the e-mails he published, it seems to go a little overboard, although I would say that Foley should have had more sense than to demonstrate that degree of interest in a teenager.

However, take a look at these copies of e-mails from ABC News. And, while the Republican House leadership is scrambling to cover its collective ass on this, Foley has resigned.

And of course, this is no surprise (from the San Francisco Chronicle):

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California proposed to the House that its ethics committee investigate and make a preliminary report in 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct.

Instead, majority Republicans engineered a vote to allow the ethics panel to decide whether there should even be an investigation.

Note the last sentence. Does that sound familiar?

House leadership knew about these incidents a year ago. As a matter of fact, according to ABC's Brian Ross:

[O]ne page said his "entire class was warned about Foley from people involved in the program". Now if warnings were issued, then why was action never taken? Sounds like the leadership in Congress really needs to be asked some serious questions about this.

So, what do you suppose they've learned from the Vatican on pursuing pedophiles? And when do you expect we will hear about screening House pages to weed out "hommaseksuals"?

According to a bit on Pam's House Blend, Foley is gay. According to J. Jennings Moss, of ABC:

Ten years ago, I outed Foley as a gay man for The Advocate, the national gay and lesbian newsmagazine. But aside from one story in the St. Petersburg Times, no other Florida or national publications would touch the tale, either because Foley and his camp did a great job of shooting the messenger or because of the inherent fear the media have to delve honestly and without judgment into a person's sexual background.

The issue, of course, is not that Foley is gay but that he made advances to minors, which is a very different thing. Unfortunately, we can count on the Dobson Gang to conflate the two. Look for major gay-bashing from the Christianists.

It's disheartening, simply because it is not a subtle distinction, that between a gay man and a pedophile, but the Dobson Gang has managed to spread so much misinformation that it's almost impossible to focus people on the actuality. What needs to happen, probably, is for someone to get up and publicly call Dobson et al. liars and then maybe people will listen to the reality.

Actually, is sounds as though that's starting to happen:

Former Texas Congressman Dick Armey, once a stalwart ally in the culture wars, appears to be turning his back on Christian conservatives and their leaders.

The former majority leader of the House of Representatives reportedly told Ryan Sager, author of a new book on the Republican Party, that values voters and their leaders — especially Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson — are "nasty bullies."

Pity that Armey is such a neanderthal on gay issues, but it's a start.

(Also from Pam Spaulding, who got it from Dobson, to whom I refuse to link.