Religious Right Strangely Silent About Foley
By Bob Geiger
Created Oct 3 2006 - 10:17am
If there's one thing you have to concede to America's Religious Right, it's
that these folks have an amazing media and public relations network and can
issue press releases, get on television and radio and, when they really want
to, mobilize their lemming-like flock faster than Jack Abramoff can bribe a
Republican Congressman.
And yet here we sit, four days after it was revealed that Republican
Congressman Mark Foley was using the Internet to go after teenaged boys, and
all you can hear from our own little version of the Taliban is dead quiet
and crickets chirping.
Odd, isn't it? The same people who can move their followers to boycott any
company that believes gay people even have the right to exist, can't muster
much outrage over one of their own preying on young boys and, more
importantly, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives
ignoring it to save their political hides.
With the news out since Friday, James Dobson's Focus on the Family [1](FOF)
still doesn't say a word about it on their web site. In fact, if you go
there right now and do a search on "Mark Foley," the closest thing you'll
find citing Foley is a statement from March 2006 entitled More Funding
Needed to Combat Child Porn [2].
They quote Foley in that piece as expressing concern that children will
continue to be victimized if Congress does not act more proactively against
child predators.
"We are still not funding it enough," they quote Foley as saying. "This is
one of the most pervasive, dangerous elements in our society."
You just can't make this stuff up.
Meanwhile, the FOF site found plenty of time in their CitizenLink [3] News
Center to do 49 "news" stories in September covering a whole bunch of stuff
including the presidential line-item veto, the Child Interstate Abortion
Notification Act and rapidly urging members to "thank Gov. Schwarzenegger"
for vetoing two pieces of California legislation "aimed at advancing the
homosexual agenda" but that, to sane people, were really just simple
antidiscrimination bills.
They also marshaled their forces to harangue U.S. Senators to confirm George
W. Bush's judicial nominees and, as recently as Monday, publicized Pray for
Children Weekend [4] to promote "a drug-free and safe" life for children.
I guess to the folks at FOF, that doesn't include getting indignant about
children not being safe when they're preyed upon by a right-wing,
church-going Republican.
Meanwhile, the ultraconservative Family Research Council [5] (FRC) isn't
paying a lot more attention to this either. The FRC web site's banner
headline on Monday remained Democrats Kill Parental Notification Bill in
reference to a vote made by the Senate on Friday to shelve a bill that
prohibited minors from going across state lines with a non-parental relative
to get an abortion.
The most recent updates from FRC chief Tony Perkins' Washington Update [6]
are The ACLU versus America [7] and Protecting Parents Rights to
Notification [8], the latter charmingly promoted by the FRC as an issue so
important that followers should "urge Senators to protect minor girls from
abortion predators."
But there's just not much there about protecting teens from Republicans on
Capitol Hill who admire their "cute butt(s)" and are willing to ".drive a
few miles for a hot stud" like one of the young Congressional pages.
In fairness to the FRC, they did finally issue a press release from Tony
Perkins late Monday, saying that he is "shocked by this spectacle of
aberrant sexual behavior." They then turned right around and subtly placed
the blame on the gay community, saying that "this is the end result of a
society that rejects sexual restraints in the name of diversity."
The "letters campaign" section of Gary Bauer's amusingly-named American
Values [9] web site is still goading supporters to write to Washington about
how much gay people are threatening heterosexual marriage -- but not a thing
about one of their guys going after young boys on the Internet.
A quick check on the American Family Association [10] finds them whipping
their minions into a frenzy over Madonna Set To Mock The Crucifixion of
Christ [11] and urging them to collectively send one million e-mails to NBC
to protest an upcoming Madonna appearance. They also continue their long
history of anti-gay activity by prompting their 3.3 million supporters to
keep boycotting Ford Motor Company due to what they allege is Ford's
"funding homosexual groups and promoting homosexual marriage."
Finally, Jerry Falwell's National Liberty Journal newspaper is currently
going after the interstate abortion bill and urging disciples to push the
issue of "religious accommodation in public schools," while saying
absolutely nothing about Mark Foley's adventures in pedophilia.
Of course, Falwell's the same pious dude who outed 'Tinky Winky' [12] of the
children's television show, Teletubbies, in the February 1999 edition of his
newspaper and warned parents to keep their kids away from the show.
"He is purple - the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a
triangle, the gay-pride symbol," wrote Falwell of his proof that it was only
a matter of time before Tinky Winky moved to Massachusetts. "As a Christian
I feel that role modeling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives
of children."
So there you have it -- the true face of the Religious Right measured in
deeds and not words.
They'll go out of their way to rally their followers to keep gay people from
getting married, boycott corporations acknowledging that right, demonize
legislators and judges who dare keep Church away from State and even attack
children's-television characters.
But nary a word about a Republican Congressman, who is co-chairman of the
Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, trolling for teen sex partners
among Congressional pages, and being protected via a cover-up by the House
Republican leadership.
I'm sure the letter-writing campaign to House Speaker Dennis Hastert will
begin the minute they've taken care of that Madonna situation.
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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