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OK, there are a couple of things of which I'm certain. First, assuming that Mark Foley really did send the alleged messages to the alleged Congressional pages, he was Just Plain Stupid, and the messages were certainly inappropriate. Second, any Republican coverup of the scandal warrants some SERIOUS smackdown. On all levels. (And hey, it got one of our local congressional races on NPR this morning!)
HOWEVER. This case has exposed an inconsistency in our sex laws. There's all this discussion about whether or not the messages Foley sent were simply inappropriate, or if they were illegal. And yet. The age of consent in Washington, D.C. is 16, and there's no law regarding age of consent for male-male sex (which my non-legally-educated brain interprets as meaning that it's the same age of consent as for straight sex) (http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm). But from what I'm learning from NPR (in this story), there are laws against soliciting a minor. This makes NO FREAKING SENSE to me. it wasn't legal for Foley to send explicit/suggestive messages to these kids, but it would have been legal for them to have sex? Give me a freaking break, people. Our country's attitudes about
Mark Foley is guilty of being Just Plain Stupid, but I refuse to call him a pedophile. And now there's the allegation that he was molested by a clergy member as a kid. Oyvey.
In other news, the guy who killed the girls in PA apparently never got over the loss of his premature daughter. I think I want to go cry now.
HOWEVER. This case has exposed an inconsistency in our sex laws. There's all this discussion about whether or not the messages Foley sent were simply inappropriate, or if they were illegal. And yet. The age of consent in Washington, D.C. is 16, and there's no law regarding age of consent for male-male sex (which my non-legally-educated brain interprets as meaning that it's the same age of consent as for straight sex) (http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm). But from what I'm learning from NPR (in this story), there are laws against soliciting a minor. This makes NO FREAKING SENSE to me. it wasn't legal for Foley to send explicit/suggestive messages to these kids, but it would have been legal for them to have sex? Give me a freaking break, people. Our country's attitudes about
Mark Foley is guilty of being Just Plain Stupid, but I refuse to call him a pedophile. And now there's the allegation that he was molested by a clergy member as a kid. Oyvey.
In other news, the guy who killed the girls in PA apparently never got over the loss of his premature daughter. I think I want to go cry now.
