An Update on Masturgate: Phallus in Wonderland

One of these men is out of the closet, the other should be locked in one.

A gay friend who is in his 20s and I were talking about Masturgate. He noted that the reaction among gays to what former Florida congressman Mark Foley did tends to break down along generational lines. To which I responded that the perception among straights isn't exactly uniform, either.

I have learned the hard way that I cannot be too careful when blogging about the scandal. A fellow blogger flipped out when he read one of my earlier posts, believing that I had intimated that all gays are pedophiles. As someone who grew up in a home where two of my parents’ closest friends were that rarest of couples 40 years ago – openly gay men who lived together – and as someone has had many gay friends and work associates, none of whom showed the slightest interest in boys, I would never have any such thing.

But there is a danger of oversimplifying, so I will tip-toe to the following conclusion:

The gay community is far more diverse than most straight folks imagine, and there is a divide between many older gays and younger gays that helps explain the differing perceptions of Masturgate.

With the exception of the rare folks like Phil and Charlie, my parents' gay friends, most older gays were closeted for most of their lives and brought plenty of baggage with them when they came out. There is an element of sexual conquest in some of them, and being attracted to younger men is not uncommon. Mind you I said younger men, not boys.

Younger gays may have their issues, as well, but they came out into a society far more accepting of homosexuality than when Phil and Charlie were around. While younger gays may have common bond with older gays in some respects, they also have plenty of differences, and my friend says there's nothing quite as creepy as being hit on by a 50- or 60-year-old gay guy when you're 20 or 30 and have no interest in older men.

'THE TRANSGENDERING OF REALITY'

Color Daniel Henninger confused, but then the associate editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page usually is. He has plenty of company in this instance.

Writes Henninger:

"Bowing to the gods of the news cycle, let us undertake the great questions of the moment. Where does post-modern American ethics place Mark Foley's homosexuality on a scale of 1 to 10 -- a 1 being just another gay guy and a 10 being a compulsive, predatory sex offender? What might fall in between seems to have confused Denny Hastert, two newspapers, one TV network and the FBI. In the event, Mr. Hastert, as the point man, is being driven from office for having failed, in hindsight, to recognize the obvious.

"On this score, Mr. Hastert has our sympathy. There is much in American life that doesn't seem 'obvious' anymore. Call it the transgendering of reality.

"This compulsion to ambiguity is the reason that both the politicians and the reporters writing about the Foley affair have been describing what the congressman did as "inappropriate." Inappropriate is the word you use when describing behavior that falls on the scale between 3 to 7. Mark Foley seems to be the kind of guy who runs up a high phone bill calling 1-800-SEX-GUYS. That might have qualified as a 10 some 50 years ago, but not anymore. Former Congressman Gerry Studds had sex in 1973 with a House page. He said it was consensual. Even now, this is a 10. In Florida, doing a 10 probably earns you a johnboat trip to the swamps. But in Mr. Studds's Massachusetts district, it earned him five more trips to Congress."

Andrew Sullivan parries Henninger's thrust nicely, wondering at The Daily Dish:

"Where would one put [Amish school mass murderer] Charles Carl Roberts IV's heterosexuality on a scale of 1 to 10 - a 1 being just another straight guy and a 10 being a compulsive, predatory sex offender and murderer of little girls? Just asking. I mean heterosexual men are all on the same spectrum, aren't they?"

FROM CRISIS TO CATASTROPHE

My son, who is in his 20s, and I got into a pretty good debate over the Foley scandal: He couldn’t understand why I insisted that it was primarily about homosexuality, as well as some other stuff like trust and accountability.

His argument was that there isn’t necessarily a connection between pederasty or pedophilia and homosexuality, and the focus should be on those two deviancies and not on homosexuality.

I disagreed.

I noted that Foley's sexual orientation is fair game because of who he was (a duly sworn public official in charge of the House caucus on children and troubled youth), what he did (use his office to prey on vulnerable youths) and because he continues to be a lying sack of excrement.

Foley came out of the closet, albeit in an alcohol rehab center after he was caught out, and in a succession of alibis blamed his sexual orientation, his drinking and then being molested by a Catholic priest as a child for his behavior, while denying that he had ever actually had sex with anyone. It was only a matter of time before that canard was destroyed, and people who say that they did have sex with the former congressman are coming forward. The line forms to the right.

(My son also asked if I thought that all Catholic priests who molested boys were gay. I do not.)

I'll leave it up to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post to settle the argument. Robinson writes:

"Let's deal with the circumstance that dares not speak its name: How much of the Mark Foley scandal's impact is due to the fact that he's a gay man who preyed on young boys?

"The basic story line -- powerful man exploits children -- would be the same if Foley were straight and underage girls had been the subject of his lurid attentions. But would the intensity of the scandal be the same? Would there be all this unseemly finger-pointing and hand-washing among the House leadership? Would Dennis Hastert be fighting to keep his job; would Christian conservatives be so apoplectic; would the whole Republican Party look as if it were on the verge of a nervous breakdown?

"I doubt it. There would still be a scandal, but I think Foley's now-acknowledged homosexuality was crucial in turning a crisis for the party into a potential catastrophe. In a perfect world that wouldn't be the case, but you might have noticed there's not a lot of perfection in Washington these days.

"It's tempting to put it all down to hypocrisy . . . [but] I think it goes deeper.

"One of the central tenets of anti-homosexual doctrine is the notion of 'recruitment' -- that adult gay people lure young people into homosexuality as a way of increasing their numbers. The most extreme anti-gay activists perceive a full-fledged conspiracy. . . . This is complete bunk, of course.

"In any event, the recruitment myth helps explain why social conservatives, who make up perhaps the most loyal and energetic segment of the Republican Party's base, are so up in arms. And that outrage, in turn, helps explain why the party has been so frantic all week, so uncharacteristically slow to come up with a game plan for responding to the scandal. Social conservatives were already grumbling that the Republicans talk a good game but never get around to addressing their core issues. Now comes this."

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS MADE THEM DO IT

Then there’s Sullivan, who brings a bit more gravitas to the Masturgate debate because he happens to be gay and a Republican and damned proud of being both.

Writes Andrew:

"Every time I hear some Republican flack claiming that any previous attempt to discipline Mark Foley would have been viewed as homophobic by the media and Democrats and gays, my jaw drops to the floor. Memo to Gingrich: It is not homophobic in any way to stop a grown man preying on teens in his care, whether that guy is gay or straight. No gay person would object to stopping that; we'd all insist on it; and I have found no gay people excusing Foley since. The premise behind this excuse is itself homophobic, and shows what little clue these Republicans have about gay people in general.

"Secondly, since when is the GOP skittish about appearing homophobic anyway? The only gay people they have any time for are those prepared to give them cover to pursue gay-baiting as an electoral strategy, like Mary Cheney. The Republican party, in state after state, has demonized gay couples for years now, focusing especially on our desire to create families and stable relationships. They don't seem too worried about appearing homophobic when it comes to winning elections, do they? Gay backers of Bush in 2000, like me, were told he was different, he wasn't a bigot, he wasn't going to gay-bash to maintain power. We were lied to, and, in retrospect, we were fools to have believed any of it. And now they have the gall to defend their lack of basic responsibility to teens by blaming political correctness? In other words, blaming us? Puh-lease."

(Photography by Larry Downing/Reuters)