family values

["Robert L Bass" <sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with
such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual
addiction." Rep. Mark Foley, on President Clinton's affair with
Monica Lewinsky.

In March of 2002 Rep. Mark Foley asked the House to hold hearings to
investigate web sites operating legally, but showing pictures of
pre-teen girls wearing sexually revealing clothes and striking
provocative poses. The sites contained no nudity and the girls modeled
with the full knowledge and consent of their parents. Needless to say,
even though these sites were perfectly legal and not breaking any more
laws against pedophilia than Calvin Klein-in fact, an argument could
be made they were even less exploitative than Calvin Klein-it
certainly didn't take a genius (witness Foley's awareness of it) to
figure out that these pre-teen modeling sites were getting most of
their hits not from agents, but from predators. So, kudos to Foley for
bringing attention to it. Still, one can't help but wonder if Foley
would have been so quick to bring these sites down if they'd been
featuring young boys cavorting around.

Is there anyone really surprised that a leader in the fight against
internet porn was himself an abuser of it? How many times must we go
down this road? I suppose those who are expressing their shock that
internet porn crusader Rep. Mark Foley was engaging in sexually
explicit e-mail conversations with an underage male page-and at first
those expressing the most shock were the Republican leadership who, it
turned out, had known about Mark Foley's pedophilic predilections for
at least a year-were probably also shocked by Jim Bakker and Jimmy
Swaggart's sexual escapades at the same time those two were making
millions by damning other people as sinners in the 80s.

The Republicans have ridden to great heights on their promises that
they alone stand for family values and can protect America from going
down the road to debauchery. They also have ridden high on their claims
that they alone can protect the US from terrorist attacks. Well, heck,
if they don't even want to be bothered protecting one sixteen year
old boy from a pervert they all know and toss back drinks with, why in
the hell would any even remotely intelligent person want to entrust the
security of the entire country to these hypocritical bastards?