Moral Misdirection

As you no doubt know by now, Representative Mark Foley, the Republican congressman from Florida has resigned following the discovery of lurid e-mails and instant messages he sent to male teenage congressional pages. Interestingly, almost every news agency covering this story has carefully omitted the "male" part choosing instead to emphasize the age of Foley's targets. ABC News, who broke story, led with the headline, "Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Messages to Minors." The Los Angeles Times ran a story under the headline, "Foley on the Prowl: 2 Creepy 2 B 4Gotten," which framed the issue around the predatory nature of child molestation. The Times story went so far as to compare the Republican leadership to the Catholic Church, alleging Republicans were engaged in a similar cover-up to protect pedophiles. Even FoxNews refers to Foley's intendeds as "underage pages."

However, last Tuesday Foley's attorney, David Roth, publicly confirmed what many had long suspected; Mark Foley is gay. Roth went on to say that "any suggestion that Mark Foley is a pedophile is false."

Throughout the course of this story; the press has been very careful to avoid any connection between Mark Foley being homosexual and his solicitation of adolescent males (or pedophilia) - a connection that many homosexual activists have worked very hard to suppress over the years. The gay advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) published a "Fact Sheet" on sexual orientation and child sexual abuse stating that, "A sexual abuser who molests a child of the same sex is usually not considered homosexual." The only basis for this claim is the unqualified opinion of HRC which states that "pedophiles who molest boys cannot be considered homosexual if that individual has at any time been married or sexually involved with women."

However, as Timothy J. Dailey, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Marriage and Family Studies of Family Research Council points out, "the terms 'homosexual' and 'pedophile' are not mutually exclusive: they describe two intersecting types of sexual attraction. Webster's Dictionary defines 'homosexual' as someone who is sexually attracted to persons of the same sex. 'Pedophile' is defined as 'an adult who is sexually attracted to young children.' The former definition refers to the gender of the desired sexual object, while the latter refers to the age of the desired sexual object."

The fact is an extraordinarily disproportionate number of pedophiles are homosexual. A study in the Journal of Sex Research found that approximately one-third of child sex-offenders had victimized boys. The authors point out that despite a 20 to 1 ratio of heterosexual men to homosexual men; "homosexual pedophiles commit over one-third of all child sex offenses." (Studies place the male homosexual population in the U.S. well under 3 percent.)

The sexual targets in the Foley case were not "young children" but adolescent males which are of an age commonly desirable to adult homosexuals. A study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that homosexual men are attracted to young males. The study compared the sexual age preferences of heterosexual men, heterosexual women, homosexual men, and lesbians. The results showed that, in marked contrast to the other three categories, "all but 9 of the 48 homosexual men preferred the youngest two male age categories," which included males as young as fifteen. In the Gay Report by homosexual researchers Karla Jay and Allen Young, the authors report data showing that "73 percent of homosexuals surveyed had at some time had sex with boys sixteen to nineteen years of age or younger."

Conversely, a study of sex offenders against male children in Behavior Research and Therapy found that "male homosexual pedophiles are sexually attracted to males of all ages." In other words, there is little distinction between homosexuals attracted to male children (homosexual pedophiles) and homosexuals attracted to male adults. I would add that once one has descended into perverse sexual practices; the degrees to which one is willing to venture become minor.

Dr. Timothy Dailey points out that, "Despite this evidence, in their efforts to divorce homosexuality from pedophilia, homosexual apologists insist on a rigid, narrow definition of the terms 'homosexual' and 'pedophile' that permits no overlap of the terms. They deny that homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys."

Historically the connection between homosexuality and pedophilia has been much less obscure. David Thorstad, founder of New York's Gay Activist Alliance in 1969 opposed, as a part of their platform, age of consent laws, which prohibited adults from having sex with children. Thorstad is also a founding member of North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). (NAMBLA is an admitted member of New York's Council of Lesbian and Gay Organizations as well as the International Lesbian and Gay Association.) "Thorstad argues that there is a natural and undeniable connection between homosexuality and pedophilia." Thorstad writes, "Boy-lovers were involved in the gay movement from the beginning... Gay youth groups encouraged adults to attend their dances... There was a mood of tolerance, even joy at discovering the myriad of lifestyles within the gay and lesbian culture."

The inaugural issue of Gay Community News in 1979 challenged the gay movement "to return to a vision of sexual liberation" arguing that the "goal of gay liberation is the achievement of sexual freedom for all - not just equal rights for lesbian and gay men but also freedom of sexual expression for young people and children."

A brief survey of "gay literature" reveals a genre rife with references and themes promoting adult-child sex or "intergenerational intimacy" as it is benignly referred to among the homosexual community. It was only after gay rights advocates figured out that these themes were strategically harmful that they began to publicly distance the gay rights movement from its pedophilic association.

I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Mark Foley's life that has thoroughly undone him, his reputation and career. He was, as his attorney recently announced, sexually molested by a man when he was in his early teens. (A factor present in over 46 percent of homosexual men compared to only 7 percent of heterosexual men.) I would encourage every reader to pray for this man; that the Lord would deliver him from his bondage to this devastating and degrading lifestyle. Lastly, this tragedy is compounded when politicians and the press are willing to misdirect our attention from the real issue: the normalization of perverse sexual behavior, homosexuality and its all too natural consequences to a ridiculously politicized issue thus ignoring the real problem.

Copyright S. Michael Craven 2006

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S. Michael Craven is the Founding Director of the Center for Christ & Culture, a ministry of the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.