When you work in Washington, you inevitably hear lots of rumors about various members of Congress. Who’s having an affair, who’s got a drinking problem, who’s gay, etc. Nine times out of 10, these rumors are either untrue or unimportant — and they hardly ever reach the surface of public attention.
Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) is one of those congressman who is rumored to be gay. Talk has circulated in his district for years about his sexual orientation, but no opponent ever made an issue out of it, the media never asked, and voters in his area never considered the rumors important enough to change their vote. Indeed, he’s won re-election easily for several cycles, occasionally without even a token Democratic opponent.
Regardless, Foley, if he is gay, isn’t the only one in the House. There are a couple of gay Dem lawmakers and even one gay GOP House member.
Foley, however, is preparing a run for the Senate next year, which means an entirely different level of scrutiny. Apparently, Foley heard that the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel was preparing to run a story in the next few days “outing” him, though whether that was true remains open to question. Nevertheless, he held a press conference via phone yesterday with political reporters from Florida about the issue.
”Elected officials, even those who run for the United States Senate, must have some level of privacy,” Foley said. He added, ”My mother and father raised me and the rest of my family to believe that there are certain things we shouldn’t discuss in public. Some of you may believe that it’s old-fashioned, but I believe those are good ideals to live by.”
When someone asked him point-blank if he is gay, Foley said, “That’s the kind of question that I do think is highly inappropriate.”
In other words, Foley held a press conference to deal with rumors about his sexuality to say he won’t answer questions about his sexuality. What’s wrong with that? Not a damn thing.
I may not like Foley or his Republican voting record, and if he gets the GOP nomination to run for the Senate I’ll urge all my friends in Florida to vote against him, but I think he did exactly the right thing yesterday. His sexual orientation is his business and no one else’s. By announcing he won’t answer questions about this issue, Foley will leave many assuming that he is gay, but it doesn’t — or shouldn’t — matter. This isn’t “don’t ask, don’t tell,” it’s “don’t bother asking because I’m not saying either way.”
This would be a different situation if Foley was more of a fire-breathing, Christian right ideologue. If he were a member of Congress constantly railing against the dangers of the “homosexual agenda,” and it turned out that he was gay, it would be easier to justify this revelation as newsworthy. After all, it wouldn’t be an invasion of his privacy, it would be an representation of his hypocrisy.
But on social issues, Foley is fairly moderate as House Republicans go. He’s anti-abortion and pro-gun, but he’s also supported expanding AIDS research funding, family planning programs, and domestic-partner benefits.
Ironically, rumors about Foley’s sex life may not do his candidacy in, but his moderate voting record might. Foley will be running in a primary against some pretty conservative competitors, including former Rep. Bill McCollum, and many Florida GOP insiders believe Foley isn’t right-wing enough to win a primary fight.
As Ken Connor, executive director of the conservative Family Research Council and himself a former gubernatorial candidate in Florida, told the Miami Herald that he doesn’t care if Foley is gay, but that he believes Foley’s record “represents the radical homosexual agenda, and I’m not sure that’s the path our party needs to take.”
Lori Waters, executive director of a religious right group called the Eagle Forum, told Salon that what matters most to her organization “is how [Foley] votes, and he is not a conservative. If he’s out there pushing the gay agenda, we’re very much opposed to those things, and I would hope the voters in Florida would be as well.”
In fact, Foley’s philosophy about privacy may be out of the GOP mainstream right now. Sen. Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum (R-Pa.), you might recall, won the praise of his right-wing allies in Congress and the White House when he said the government has the right, indeed the responsibility, to make intimate, private sexual behavior illegal because there is no right to privacy.
“I would argue this right to privacy that doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution,” Santorum said. He added, “And the further you extend it out, the more…this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, ‘Well, it’s my individual freedom.’ Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that’s antithetical to strong, healthy families.”
That’s a far cry from Foley’s belief that ”elected officials, even those who run for the United States Senate, must have some level of privacy.”
Nevertheless, for everyone’s sake, I hope Foley can stick to his guns and leave sexual orientation out of his Senate race. As far as I’m concerned, by blowing off questions about his sexuality, he’s giving the perfect answer.