Foley Sets Equal Rights for LGBT Americans Back Years

This posting, by Todd Hill in the Campus Progress Blog tells how many of us feel today, thinking about Congressman Foley. PAT


Post from Campus Progress Blog:
Foley Sets Equal Rights for LGBT Americans Back Years

By ToddHill - Oct 4th, 2006 at 11:41 am EDT
As disgusting as former Congressman Mark Foley's actions were, and no matter how many people voice outrage at his actions, one fact is quite clear: Foley has set equal rights and opportunities way back for gay Americans.

I knew the very minute this scandal broke that our political opponents on the Right, including the Moral soldiers of the Christian extremists, would be pointing to this scenario as the very reason homosexuals should be condemned in our society, and how gays can't be trusted to be around children because they will prey on them like a spider prey's on a trapped fly. According to Texas Women's University around 95% of all child molesters are heterosexual, not homosexual. The claims by some that the majority of child predators are homosexuals are simply, and unequivocally not true. I challenge my fellow members of the LGBT community to stand up and denounce such unfounded comparisons in order to salvage efforts towards equality and opportunity.

I'm gay, and was molested as a child. The last thing I have a desire to do is to rob the innocence of another child, especially one of the same gender as me, and the same goes for most homosexuals who might also have been molested. Being molested plays no role in someone becoming, or being, homosexual. I know for a fact that thousands of Americans are molested today, and equal amounts, if not more, in years past. A large percentage of those individuals have no desire to turn around and rob the innocence of another child much like they were at such a young, and vulnerable age. The reason men and women molest children is because they are easy prey. They are easy to manipulate, control, terrorize, threaten, and take advantage of; it is the very cycle of nature at work. They rob them of their innocence and this action has no limitations in of it. It's the same reason it is so easy for a bully to pick on someone smaller then them instead of picking on someone their own size. Or the very reason larger animals that desire food will attack the smallest or weakest link of a herd in order to best yield themselves food to eat.

It is incredibly important to understand the difference between molestation and pedophilia, which often get blurred during such spats of hateful rhetoric towards gay America. Pedophiles are males or females with sexual thoughts or desires for younger, even pre-pubescent children. A pedophile may have the desire for sex with a child, but never act on it. A child-molester has the same desires but actually, physically acts upon them.

Here are the facts as we know them today. Foley claims to have been molested as a child, was a closeted homosexual, preyed on young teenaged boys, and now blames alcoholism for all his problems. Mark Foley's main problem was the fact he hid who he truly was, which resulted in him sneaking around like a cat at night, and now forces his lawyer to tell the world he was gay when everyone already knew that, and attempts to divulge sorrow from the masses because he was molested. As if that is supposed to give him a free pass for his disgusting actions. Foley was a pedophile, not a child-molester, and his preference was for young male-to-old male sexual molestation in his mind. Homosexuality and molestation are not one in the same, they are polar opposites. Religious extremists have now seized this story as their moral mission to once again piñata the LGBT community for even existing, instead of fully investigating the ranks of their own clergy who so often physically molest young men and women in communities across the United States. The Roman Catholic sex abuse cases are the most recent example of this, including allegations the current Pope Benedict XVI was involved in the cover up. The fact is that Mark Foley waited too late in his life to come to terms with his sexuality, and because he did so he acted upon his homosexual tendencies by dreaming of sex with younger men while living the life society deems is the normal life to live. Had he come to terms with his sexuality at a younger age he could have lived a comfortable life with a youthful partner before he reached his current age. All too often gay men who wait till late in life to come to terms with their sexuality wish to relieve their youth all over again in the life they should have lived to begin with.

It's important that members of the LGBT community take the lead in educating Americans on the facts about pedophilia and child molesters and dispelling the myths that there is a connection between homosexuality and these heinous acts. Otherwise the agenda of equality and opportunity will continue to be a distant achievement to reach as extremists will frame the debate on their terms, not ours.