Mark Foley is not gay
Here's a bit of amusing idiocy from Marshall Darts in today's Daily Kos:
Um. Yes it is.
No, it's not. It's a tiresome expression of the left's creeping fascistic tendencies, this time to require that people wear their sexual preferences on their sleeves. (I'll take a "polymorphously perverse" armband, if Woody Allen didn't get the last one. Or does he get a pedophile one?) And it isn't exactly hypocrisy for a closeted gay politician to oppose gay rights or same-sex marriage. It would be hypocrisy for an openly gay politician to do so. The closeted one could say he is living the lifestyle he advocates for all gays: secret. Furthermore, I don't agree that Mark Foley has the right to call himself gay just because's a pedophile who targets boys. Sex between adults and minors is not "gay," it's morally reprehensible. And it's a crime just about everywhere in the good ol' Dar al Harb.
Some gay-rights groups have intelligently taken Foley's self-outing for what it is: a cheap ploy to shift the focus from his apparent criminality. Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying, "It's irrelevant if he's gay or not." But a spokesman for another gay advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, said that organization would not take a stand one way or the other on the issue of Foley's sudden gay-ness. "We're not going to comment on it,'' he said. If HRC is in the business of protecting gay rights, they should comment on it, because Foley's donning the mantle of the oppressed homosexual damages all gays' chances of achieving acceptance and equal rights.
Anyway, if we follow the advice of Marshall Darts, why stop with just the right side of the aisle? Is he suggesting there are no closeted gays in the Democrat Party? Or maybe he's saying that all closeted gay Democrats support gays on issues like same-sex marriage. What about former governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey?
Democrat? Check.
Gay? Check.
Closet? Check.
Opposed same-sex marriage? Check.
McGreevey claimed he opposed gay rights so nobody would suspect he was gay. Wow. I guess we're lucky his dirty little secret wasn't that his grandparents were Jewish.
So Mr. Darts, if you're concerned about hypocrisy, don't talk about outing only Republicans. And if you are concerned about rights, don't advocate outing anyone. The right to be openly homosexual should be respected, but so should the right to privacy. Expose crime, expose corruption, and certainly expose the pedophiles. But if sexual orientation truly doesn't matter, then treat it like it doesn't matter.
The best thing for the whole country is to force the Republican Party to "out" every gay on their side of the aisle in Congress, whether on staff or a politician.
This is not a homophobic reaction to the Mark Foley scandal.
Um. Yes it is.
Quite the contrary, it is to expose Republican hypocrisy and to take the gay issue off the political table.
No, it's not. It's a tiresome expression of the left's creeping fascistic tendencies, this time to require that people wear their sexual preferences on their sleeves. (I'll take a "polymorphously perverse" armband, if Woody Allen didn't get the last one. Or does he get a pedophile one?) And it isn't exactly hypocrisy for a closeted gay politician to oppose gay rights or same-sex marriage. It would be hypocrisy for an openly gay politician to do so. The closeted one could say he is living the lifestyle he advocates for all gays: secret. Furthermore, I don't agree that Mark Foley has the right to call himself gay just because's a pedophile who targets boys. Sex between adults and minors is not "gay," it's morally reprehensible. And it's a crime just about everywhere in the good ol' Dar al Harb.
Some gay-rights groups have intelligently taken Foley's self-outing for what it is: a cheap ploy to shift the focus from his apparent criminality. Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was quoted in the Miami Herald as saying, "It's irrelevant if he's gay or not." But a spokesman for another gay advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign, said that organization would not take a stand one way or the other on the issue of Foley's sudden gay-ness. "We're not going to comment on it,'' he said. If HRC is in the business of protecting gay rights, they should comment on it, because Foley's donning the mantle of the oppressed homosexual damages all gays' chances of achieving acceptance and equal rights.
Anyway, if we follow the advice of Marshall Darts, why stop with just the right side of the aisle? Is he suggesting there are no closeted gays in the Democrat Party? Or maybe he's saying that all closeted gay Democrats support gays on issues like same-sex marriage. What about former governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey?
Democrat? Check.
Gay? Check.
Closet? Check.
Opposed same-sex marriage? Check.
McGreevey claimed he opposed gay rights so nobody would suspect he was gay. Wow. I guess we're lucky his dirty little secret wasn't that his grandparents were Jewish.
So Mr. Darts, if you're concerned about hypocrisy, don't talk about outing only Republicans. And if you are concerned about rights, don't advocate outing anyone. The right to be openly homosexual should be respected, but so should the right to privacy. Expose crime, expose corruption, and certainly expose the pedophiles. But if sexual orientation truly doesn't matter, then treat it like it doesn't matter.
posted by tompain at 7:33 PM
1 Comments:
excellent point. it's kinda too bad more people don't see the great difference between orientation (involving healthy sexual interaction between consenting adults) and pedophilia, which is a sickness caused by many factors, including fear and the power dynamic. Obviously, people in the Christian Right movement cannot deal with this: it would mean facing their own abusive behavior towards their own children.
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