“Jimmy Gatt, and others.. About outing. I said before I’m generally opposed to outing.”

And I suppose I should have been more clear about my response.

Would it be a good thing (for gay men) if all gay Republicans were outed? I don’t know.

Is outing, in general, a good thing? No way!

I think we’re pretty much of similar minds on this topic.

Jimmy Gatt, and others.. About outing.

I said before I’m generally opposed to outing. I don’t think it is effective as a political tactic (as if that could be a good enough reason), and I don’t think it is the moral thing to do personally. I think everyone should have the right to determine their own identity (how’s that for an opening for the ex-gay movement?), as well as the right to determine how to express it.

And besides, you can call me prideful if you want, but there are some folks that I don’t want anybody to learn that they’re gay. 🙂

Okay, that’s a joke.

But come to think of it, could that sort of attitude partly explain the timid response on the part of some upon learning of Foley’s behavior? I think that’s the crux of what I’ve been trying to get at while using far too many words.

Our society is overwhelmingly more protective of females but, in these instances of attempted molestation, I agree that the young males are more at risk. They do mature more slowly emotionally than females; they are more likely to take risks…to try ‘adventurous’ behaviors.

And Jim B’s last statement (question)…could the fear of ‘guilt by association’ have silenced some who knew of Foley’s attempts? It’s not that they would be assumed to be predators but they could be assumed to be gay. While I’m basically against ‘outing’, I often think that when an individual pursues public office (i.e. politics) they ought to reckon with the fact that any ‘deep dark secrets’ could lead to unfortunate compromises. An individual who feels the need to keep closeted about their sexuality should pursue a line of work that isn’t public.

In a slightly different vein, it would seem that as a society we hate pedophilia BUT we don’t hate it as much as we should. The psychiatric profession has several issues which they MUST report even if told in the privacy of a therapeutic session. I believe that the potential molestation of a child or vulnerable adult is one of them. Those in the political arena ought to be held to the same requirements. There ought to be no excuse for failure to report such a threat.

No. Individuals are to blame for the bad choices of individuals.

-Did gay staffers and congressmen cover up his activities?

I don’t know. There are certainly many reasons to do so, none of them good.

-Blogactive blogger, Mike Rogers, thinks the answer is to out all closeted gay Republicans. Is this a good thing?

That depends on what your values are and what the fallout will be. According to my own values, I really can’t tell becasue I have no idea what the fallout would be. At first, I thought that the Mark Foley thing would be bad for gay men because of the Democrats’ desire to gain political points through the demonization of gay men. At the same time, I suddenly heard Ann Coulter defending gay men, so I really don’t know if this is going to be bad or good. Likewise, I don’t know how outing all gay republicans would help or harm.

-Will this scandal impact the November elections?

I don’t know.

-Does this scandal have any relevance to pedophilia and/or homosexuality in general?

It will be spun that way. Anti-gays will continue to exploit the fear of the “gay predator” to make it appear that all gays are inherently untrustworthy around children or even around adults. If this question intends to ask, “Does the Mark Foley scandal lend credence to the all-gays-are-predators fear?” I would say no, it does not.

Thanks for your comments and transparency about your own journey and your values on responsibility.

Regarding teens, gender and initiation: I think adolescent boys tend to take more risks and are more immature than adolescent girls. They are less likely to use language related tasks to mediate problem-solving. I think this makes them more vulnerable to exploitation.

I think we agree that our older minds give us an advantage, we are less impulsive and tend to be more contemplative. We are also less egocentric, able to engage in a form of empathy which adolescents struggle to achieve. That emphathy drives us to think about what is in the best interests of the risk-taking, initiating adolescent.

That is all true, if I apply my maturity appropriately. If I do not, I can use my empathy and planning skills to “troll,” for the impulsive, the needy, insecure and the naive. The older male (regardless of sexual orientation) can also use those skills to try to reclaim lost or regretted youth. It is hard for me to really see and care for someone when they are a means to an end.

Older objects of affection have more neurological and physiological maturity to better choose for themselves than do adolescents. Sometimes we misunderstand the adolescent male’s risk-taking behavior as “choosing” in an informed manner. It is choosing risk, but not in an informed manner.

Enjoying the conversation.

David Blakeslee

I think that would be a hard argument to make. Girls may generally be more emotionally mature than boys, but I don’t think that necessarily extends to girls who succumb to the advances of older men.

On the other hand, boys are socialize to be more sexually aggressive. While the adult ALWAYS bears the responsibility to ensure the relationship between the adult and much younger man (and remember, we’re talking well past post-pubescent here) is appropriate, the thing that is rarely discussed is the willingness ( and perhaps aggression) with which some of these very young men approach older men.

I’ll reiterate: This is not an excuse. Several years ago, an 18-year-old approached me in earnest; I flatly turned him down and didn’t give a second thought about it. And I am not a hero for having done so simply because this is how all emotionally mature men behave. We take responsibility not only for ourselves, but for those who are less mature as well.

Maturity goes all the way around, as does initiation and agression. If you take away the physical ages, it can be hard to know who is exploiting who. But I repeat, it is always the adult’s responsibility regardless of who is the aggressor or any other circumstances.

Good question. First, I want to echo boo, and say that I think that while it may be a very small factor in explaining Foley’s behavior, I would never claim that it is even close to being a primary explanation for what Foley did.

I think, however, it offers a partial explanation for how people reacted to what Foley did — the hesitance to deal with the problem forcefully.

I am speaking out of my own experience on both sides of the closet, so please forgive me if I doth project too much.

And I am, admittedly tossing the term “closeted” very loosely. There is a range and degree of “closetedness” which could be looked at almost the way Kinsey defined sexuality on a scale from 0 to 6. When gay people want to find out if someone is out or not, the question never stops with “are you out?”, but goes into “who are you out to?”

IMO, most people are closeted because they are afraid of what others may think or do. That’s why being closeted is very often situational – out to friends and family, but not co-workers or especially not to the boss, for example.

So, in this example, if you have a vested interest in being closeted among your colleages (i.e. congressmen and fellow staffers), you may be less willing to point out something terrible that someone else is doing, especially if that action coincides with a stereotype, and if you fear that this stereotype will then be used against you.

From my own many years in the closest (I only emerged about 7 years ago), I know how sensitive all things gay can be even if you’re partially closeted. I could write a book, but to try to keep the comment short (yeah, too late, I know), I would say that my efforts to “cover” something others thought was wrong with me meant that I was sometimes tempted to try to “cover” something that was definitely wrong with others.

I’m sure you egghead psychologists have a word for what I’m trying to describe 😉 Ya’ll seem to have a word for everything and I’d like to know what it is!

What’s odd to me is how the desire to protect the closet even extends to straight people, especially when they know someone who is gay. Remember the GOP’s collective wince when Kerry supposedly “outed” Mary Cheney – the most “out” Republican of 2004? It was considered outrageous that anyone would point this out. I haven’t begun to sort out what this means in my own mind, but I think it is a fascinating dynamic, one that I think may have played a role in Hastert’s and Reynold’s timid response when they first learned about Foley’s behavior. (And that would be a the most charitable theory, IMO, because the only other plausible explanation would involve crass election-year politics.)

I would no sooner allow my son to spend private time with a gay man that I would my daughter with a straight man.

But when that man appears and claims to be straight, but is actually gay, he is engaging in a deliberate deception that puts children at risk.

To do so we have to emphasize certain facts and ignore others and we tend to do that based upon worldview and political goals. In essence we either quickly oversimplify or make overly complex the target of our curiosities.

This is true of Mark Foley, Barney Frank, John Paulk, Annie Heche, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Swaggart and many others. There are plenty of “dull axes” out there, ready to grind away.

I would just ask us all to remember that Foley decided, as an adult to deal with his Same Sex Attraction in a way that best suited him. Describing him as “in the closet” seems contraindicated by the facts. To describe him as “gay identified” seems contraindicated by the facts. His behavior with minors seems as if he is trolling, but to date, that is all that it can be characterized as. Some heterosexuals in positions of power make the same poorly disguised advances which I find offensive.

I think it is safe to draw this conclusion: Eroticizing youth tends to result in the exploitation of youth.

I just had a thought about maturity. Since girls tend to be more emotionally mature than boys throughout adolescence, is it even more exploitative to hit on adolescent boys than adolescent girls (whether gay or straight?).

I think one of our options on this blog is to maintain a true sense of curiosity. The kind of curiosity that ultimately will change each one of us, because it is sincere and humble.

It is awful tempting to restrict curiosity to searching for those events which will confirm our preconceptions or political agenda.

David Blakeslee

Identifying something as a contributing factor doesn’t mean it has to be the only contributing factor. The Son of Sam killed people because he thought the devil told him to through his neighbor’s dog, but there are many people who don’t think their neighbor’s dog talks to them and still kill people.