Gay Pages

On the cusp of the mid-terms and a hopeful Demotrounce, I was thinking about how my vote for MVP still goes to Mr. Mark Foley (who better still have a bigger impact than Foot-In-The-Mouth Kerry). And it reminded me of an article I read a few weeks ago about how Foley was not the first Congressmen interested in pages. I don't have the specifics, but the general story was that in the 80's two other Congressmen got in trouble for relationships with male pages. The first guy tearfully came out of the closet and begged forgiveness. The second (I believe from Illinois) more or less said it was his private life and since the age of consent in DC was 16 he wasn't breaking any laws. What happened to the second guy you ask? Reelected 4 more terms.

I don't know about you all, but this really surprised me. I think of gay rights as the Civil Rights campaign of our age and I feel like we have come very far since my childhood in the 80's. Does this show that we haven't? Or is it more that it was so in the closet that people were okay with him being gay as long as he continued to not talk about it? Or perhaps it was just that the second guy stuck up for himself. Not sure... But I can't deny that I'm not a little bit thrilled that this is doing so much damage to the party of conservative values. Gay pages rock!!!