Gay Community Reacts With Ambivalence To Foley's Coming Out

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA - Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley's decision to acknowledge he is gay didn't surprise those in the gay community who've known him for years or watched from a distance and suspected.
Gays activists cautioned Tuesday - as they have since the scandal broke surrounding sexually explicit Internet communications with teens - that Foley's sexual orientation, in or out of the closet, has nothing to do with improper involvement with minors.
"His sexuality was never a question. Everybody knew. (But) being gay and being interested in teenagers are two different things," said Eric Johnson, who was assistant manager of a Foley campaign for the Florida Legislature in 1991 and 1992.
Johnson, now the openly gay chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., said he never saw any indication of an interest in teenagers by Foley.
"It's definitely a shame that he wasn't able to come out when the issue was just his sexuality. When he comes out at the same time of these revelations you can't help that some people will equate that (being gay) with being a pederast," he said. "It's not true."
Johnson's view is backed up by science, said Melodie Moorehead, a psychologist who counsels patients and their families at several South Florida hospitals, including Kindred Hospital in Fort Lauderdale.
"Molestation has nothing to do with homosexuality," she said.
Foley has been accused of inappropriate e-mail exchanges with teenage boys. The term pedophilia technically applies to sexual contact between someone older than 16 and a child younger than 13.
"Any suggestion that Mark Foley is a pedophile is false," said his attorney, David Roth.
A 1994 study in the journal Pediatrics found no scientific connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. A University of Colorado study found only two of 269 verified cases of child abuse examined were committed by a gay or lesbian offender.
Rand Hoch, a Democrat and gay activist who has known Foley for nearly 20 years, said he periodically talked to him about his sexuality. The then-congressman didn't think he could come out and remain in politics.
"I think he felt the people who he dealt with in the Republican Party, some of them would not continue to support him. He felt he would have been marginalized," Hoch said.
Leading activists in both parties had similar reactions to Tuesday's coming out.
"Everyone knew he was gay," said Andy Eddy, spokesman of the Broward Log Cabin Club, a gay Republican group. "The heartbreaking part is not that he his gay. It's the betrayal that went on with the young pages."
Michael Albetta, president of the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus, said this is a case of a powerful person abusing his position.
"This does not relate to being gay," Albetta said. "A pedophile is a pedophile whether you're gay or straight. So he's gay now. So what?"
from The Kansas City Star