Dean Hara makes it clear that he is talking about the fact that what he considered important was Studds' re-election after coming out publicly rather than his re-election despite being involved in a scandal with a page.
This raises the question Jar just did and I agree would be interesting. What if Foley had not resigned and his constituents were willing to vote him in again? Would his future lover be able to look at this form of coming out and vindication have been okay?
In this case one might ask if Foley would even be given a chance to run again, whereas Studds was.
So in fact Hara doesn't tie Studds' 'activity', having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old page, to his homosexuality except in as much as the page concerned was male.
You have missed my point. Liberal commentators have stated that with Foley, sexual interest in someone less than 18 IS pedophilia and should not be confused with homosexuality. With Studds, he actually had sex with someone under 18 and his activity IS considered homosexuality, with his re-election vindication for homosexuality. In a modern landscape would Studds have survived the link to pedophilia, and been able to assert himself as defending homosexuality?
Studds had one relationship with a 17 year old page whereas Foley seems to have had a pattern of approaching pages and establishing a semi-intimate relationship with a view to the possible development of that relationship into a sexual one once the pages have left the program. At least in some cases these approaches appear to have been unwelcome.
This I find rather convenient as an argument.
We do not have an e trail but we do know that Studds had actual sex with what is being called a minor in Foley's case and so pedophilic. Thus it doesn't matter what manner he gained that relationship. We have no idea if Studds contacted anyone else before the one relationship, or if he had not attained that relationship, he would have approached anyone else.
On the flipside we seem to have an extensive documentation on Foley's personal communications. Let's leave behind the fact that if you really believe in Studds' position you'd agree such prying on our part is none of our business, and pry anyway. What one finds is that he wrote several pages over the course of years. Some seem innocuous but perhaps probitive. Some were explicit. The extremely explicit conversations were NOT to anyone that was complaining, and appear to be quite consensual. In those emails he comes out and says the sexual references were fantasy and not for real action. On top of that in all cases that pages went and met with him (and how put out could they be if they actually met with the guy) absolutely nothing untoward happened.
So yes they are different. Studds had sex with a minor. Not only was he a hair away from having commited a crime at the time, under current federal laws he would have been guilty of a felony. Foley never had sex with any minors and it appears that whatever his fantasies were he never acted on them even when he had the chance. Oh yes, and for Foley it appears a page that didn't like his familiarity was able to end it by simply not responding.
Thus of "condemnable" activity, if it is based on actual activity with regards to "minors" then Studds is worse, with regard to numbers of pages verifiably contacted Foley is worse, and with regard to using pages they are equal. And the only reason Foley is known to be worse on numbers may be due to the changed nature of communication.
Again this hardly seems to be the case given the distinct nature of the activities.
Actually I gave Jon Stewart as a reference, but he is not the only one. There are plenty of leftwing blogspaces and regular media which attack Foley's conduct as it pertains to activity with minors (which would include what Studds did). There is another thread on Foley which contains quite a bit of venom from that angle.
But let's take Stewart. There certainly are more segments that he has had on that scandal
here is a page from which you can look for more. In one called "Fallout Boy" he specifically refs Studds, because a rep had done so. Only he didn't suggest there was a difference, he simply criticized reps tried to shift blame away from Foley by referring to a dem who "sodomized" a page. In others he continually pushes ages downward, as well as increases references to physical acts to connect Foley to overt pedophilia.
In your own clip Stewart criticizes Gingrich (who explained that if reps had gone against Foley early they would be accused of gay-bashing) by suggesting that reps equating gays to pedophiles (by which he is clearly refering to Foley) would itself be gay bashing. Thus he draws the line between Foley's activities and being gay, based on age. The same would go for Stubbs, unless one wants to play a game with differential AOC laws as the reason to condemn someone morally for something, and not for someone else.
I agree that Foley offers a few more opportunities for laughs. But if he (at the time) couldn't come up with something for a congressman named Studds being censured for having sex with a minor page, I'd say he'd lost it.
holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)
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