Reflections, Reflections

Washblade - April 2-2004:

Foley is a co-sponsor of separate bills that would ban employment discrimination against gays and give the federal government authority to prosecute anti-gay hate crimes.

Foley later dropped out of the Senate race. His withdrawal came several months after an alternative newspaper in West Palm Beach reported that Foley is gay.

Shortly after the Washington Blade reported the allegations in the West Palm paper, Foley held a press conference with mainstream Florida newspapers announcing that he would not answer questions regarding his sexual orientation. He has denounced stories about his alleged homosexuality as the “revolting and unforgivable” work of “rumor mongers.”

But when Foley dropped out of the race, he cited his father’s illness, rather than the gay issue, as his reason for withdrawing from the race. At the time of his withdrawal, Foley had a substantial fund-raising lead over his opponents.


Broward LCR lobbies Foley
A lobbying effort by members of the Broward Log Cabin Republicans may have helped to persuade Foley to come out against the proposed amendment.

“You can be sure that Log Cabin has not been sitting on its hands about this,” said Andy Eddy, Broward LCR board chair and director of communications. “Everyone in Log Cabin has been approaching him and talking to him about this.”

Eddy said he thinks the personal appeals may have persuaded Foley to come down off the fence on the constitutional amendment issue. “A lot of people have to think this out, especially around election time,” Eddy said.

Michael Albetta, president of the Dolphin Democrats, a South Florida gay Democratic club, compared Foley’s earlier silence on the marriage amendment to “prominent Jews in the United States who remained silent during the Holocaust.” He thinks the recent flurry of Republicans coming out against the amendment convinced Foley that it was safe to oppose it.

“I think he goes with the wind,” Albetta said.

Foley’s district, which once included gay neighborhoods in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, was changed in a Florida redistricting plan approved by a Republican-controlled state legislature. A district map on Foley’s office Web site shows he no longer represents any part of Broward County, where Fort Lauderdale is located, and his district’s portion of the city of West Palm Beach was reduced to a tiny section.

The newly carved district snakes along the state’s east coast from Royal Palm Beach, traveling north to Fort Pierce, and around Lake Okeechobee through the Everglades to Port Charlotte, which is located on the Gulf of Mexico.

Ditto said he wasn’t sure if the makeup of the new district included a more conservative-leaning constituency that would be more supportive of an anti-gay constitutional amendment than Foley’s old district.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) now represents the Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas that were once part of Foley’s district. Hastings has said he opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment and will vote against it if it reaches the House floor.

Phil LaPadula contributed to this report.

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And the Homo Cabin Republicans had never heard even a tiny bit about Foley's pederastic behavior? All the pages knew it, but the Homo Cabin Republicans did not? Right.

Or maybe, just like it happened to Foley, if an investigation were conducted, we would discover Foley isn't the only active pederast in Congress? Isn't the purpose of screaming "how revolting and unforgivable it is to expose certain truths about sexuality attitudes and behaviors," exactly to stimy and cover up those truths which are the most ugly? And which encompass the greatest hypocrisy and lack of character?