Insidious

Steve Gilliard on the latest page "scandal":


What people forget is thart Kolbe could be a nice guy, be great with everyone, but then express interest in a teenager, and everyone see it as natural. Foley was a sloppy drunk. Kolbe could have been much more clever in his approaches to teen boys. Even on the trip, some people saw things, some didn't. Because some people are very clever in what they do

But my point is this: when adults seek to spend time with kids they don't know well, and having pages over to your home is as much a red flag as anything. Which is why he invited two kids along as well.

Oh, it's a witchhunt, oh, you don't understand how gay men mentor teens.

Bullshit.

Mentoring is fine. They do it all the time at the Hetrick-Martin institute, New York school for openly gay teens. However, of all the reports of teachers who date kids, none from that school. Why? Because maybe they screen their teachers carefully?

Kolbe's interest in pages, opening his home to them, taking them on trips, which is far more than people would expect from their bosses.

Ignore the fact that it's largely incoherent. Let's look at some subtext here.

This is from the news story Gilliard's working from (Note: Gilliard's link no longer works, and I couldn't turn up the story googling; here's a brief story from MSNBC that has a little additional information.):

NBC also interviewed the two former pages, who are now in their late 20s. One of them said that Kolbe was a gentleman and never acted in an improper fashion. He recalled that the pair spent time in Kolbe's house at one point — and briefly were alone with him on the trip — and that Kolbe always acted professionally and decently.

The other would not comment on Kolbe's behavior during the trip or characterize it in any way.

"I don't want to get into the details," he said. "I just don't want to get into this... because I might possibly be considered for a job in the administration."

However, the former page — who is the one to whom Kolbe allegedly paid special attention — said he had a "blast" on the trip and did not report anything improper to this parents or any House officials after the trip. He said he has a favorable impression of the page program to this day and likes Kolbe.

Here's Gilliard's comment that comes right after the quote":

What I said Monday and maintain, is that it is improper to take teenage pages on a trip with adult staff. Doing so leads to charges of an alternative agenda.

Just for comparison, this is the headline from a post on the story at Hot Air, another bastion of conservative rationality: "Rep. Jim Kolbe had “inappropriate” camping trip with pages". (It's interesting that even on that site, several of the commenters feel the same way I do about this: What story?)

OK -- one participant out of the group -- and it was a group, including Kolbe, his sister, for crying out loud, several staffers, Park Service personnel, and a couple of pages -- said some of the attention Kolbe paid to one of the pages made him "uncomfortable." The page to whom Kolbe paid this "attention" seems to have felt that nothing improper occurred, if I'm reading the story properly -- it's hard to tell just who is being quoted where, in places, although I think it's hard to miscontrue "always acted professionally and decently."

So what's Gilliard's beef? Aside from a deepseated prejudice, that is. (And note that Gilliard starts off his post with a picture of the Grand Canyon captioned "The Grand Canyon is for dating." That says a lot more than Gilliard intended, I think.)

Let's link up a couple more pieces here. First, this piece by Tristero from Hullaballoo linking pedophilia and gay sex (Tristero even throws in statutory rape, which didn't happen). It's a subtle thing, sort of part of a catalogue of horrors, but the placement jumped out at me:

This is AN EXCLUSIVELY REPUBLICAN SCANDAL involving pedophilia, gay sex, cybersex, lying, spinning sexual harassment and statutory rape to make it seem unimportant. . . . (Emphasis added.)

Apparently Tristero thinks this is a natural progression. (Leaving aside for the time being the question of why gay sex should be any more scandalous than straight sex. This is, after all, in the context of the "values voters," to whom anything pretty much is scandalous. Frightening to realize how much that kind of narrow point of view has come to dominate this country.)

Then there's the St. Andrew's story (and be sure to read Scootmaroo's comments on that one), and I have to wonder: what would the reaction have been if the teacher had not been gay? For some reason, I doubt that a straight teacher would have been given a choice between acting and teaching. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but then, paranoia and anger are two basic elements of gay men's psychological makeup.

And these reactions are coming from the "liberals."

Overall, it seems that there is still a very strong undercurrent in American thought, be it right, left, center, or out in space, that determines that any association between gay men and teenagers is questionable. Steve Gilliard seems to think that one must use exceptionally strict standards when screening teachers for gay youth or hanky-panky is inevitable. Tristero probably never even thought about the sequence "pedophilia, gay." The St. Andrew's snarl is just that, but I'm not the only commentator who sees a thread of anti-gay bias.

I've had a few things to say about overly sensitive PC types, none of them good, but you have to be tuned to these sorts of things or you make no progress at all. You have to challenge them. I won't call them "offensive," however, since that's yet another word that no longer has much meaning. "Dangerous," I think, fits better in this case. "Insidious," for sure.

As an antidote to the above, read this article by John Ireland, who served as a page before Mark Foley was in Congress.

Because it was too far to travel back to my home in California, I accepted the invitation of a Capitol Hill staffer to join her family for Thanksgiving at her home in Virginia. She was one of the many adults who served as surrogate parents and confidantes as I struggled with homesickness and the typical ups and downs of my junior year of high school. I imagine this sort of friendship might become less possible, due to the culture of distrust that is emerging in the wake of the page scandal.

Many adults on the Hill look out for the best interest of the pages, exactly because of their obvious vulnerability. I did not choose to “come out” to anyone while I was a page—it was years later before I was ready for that. I did, however, have an opportunity to see a variety of people, some more flawed than others, make their own choices in the real world, and live with the consequences.

I am confident that if early concerns about Foley had been brought to the bipartisan Page Board, they would have been dealt with promptly and effectively. Moving forward, the greatest challenge will be restoring faith in the Congress—that the politicians charged with the well-being of teenagers on Capitol Hill will treat them as if they were their own children.

Sorry (not really), but it seems as though whatever the Republicans touch turns to toxic waste.