October 4, 2006 - “Mark Foley wants you to know that he is a gay man”, his lawyer said. With that the closet door that has been ajar since 1994 was swung wide open. Representative Foley’s sexuality was an open secret in the intimate halls of Congress. As early as 1995 House pages were warned not to let Foley get too close to them. Congress is a close community and the Republican leadership of which Foley was a part is closer yet. It is hard to imagine that over slightly more than a decade nobody noticed as the 52 year old single Congressman struck up acquaintances with teen aged page boys taking them out for ice cream and the like. Well, it now appears that some one did notice and pass discrete warnings around the inner circle of the page program. The leadership was too busy to notice it appears.

When the e-mails leaked out and became public Foley’s office first attempted to characterize them as just friendly exchanges but to the Congressman’s credit he immediately resigned when he was confronted with sexually explicit messages sent to several pages over the internet. He was not the first Congressman to take advantage of his position of power to exploit teenaged pages. He did not deny or attempt to explain his behavior, at least not in public – he left that to his attorney. Secret alcoholism and a history of being molested by a priest as a teenager are offered to explain his admitted misconduct.

The Republican House Leadership has formed up as a firing squad, aligned in a circle and facing inward. The finger pointing has begun. At first Speaker Hastert professed ignorance of what the Whitehouse snow job called “naughty e-mails”. But when Majority Leader Boehner recalled that he had discussed the matter with the Speaker last spring the erstwhile high school wrestling coach fell back his faulty memory to explain the conflicting stories. He later told us that when he was contacted about the matter in March 2006 he referred it to fellow Illinois congressman John Shimkus who spoke with Foley and was assured that the communications were wholly innocent and that they would cease. The Speaker then told Boehner that the matter had been “taken care of”.

The issue that has come before the American people does not concern the Florida Republican’s sexuality. It does not even concern his use of his office to exploit young people. It does concern Congress and the institution’s evolution into a closed club in which any thing is permissible to a member so long as it doesn’t become a public embarrassment. Thus Foley joins the parade of Delay, Cunningham, and Nye whose skeletons came rattling out of the closet as the Republican leadership fought valiantly to keep the door closed.