Thanks to Michael for saying I'm a nice guy. I try to be--or at least, I try to put things in a way that suggests I won't respond to opposition by jeering or throwing a fit.

Speaking of how well things are put, Michael also links (approvingly, I assume) to this post by Andrew Sullivan about the Mark Foley flap. Maybe I'm being too picky, but I find his choice of words troubling:

Equally, the news about Mark Foley has a kind of grim inevitability to it. I don't know Foley, although, like any other gay man in D.C., I was told he was gay, closeted, afraid and therefore also screwed up. What the closet does to people - the hypocrisies it fosters, the pathologies it breeds - is brutal.

...

What I do know is that the closet corrupts. The lies it requires and the compartmentalization it demands can lead people to places they never truly wanted to go, and for which they have to take ultimate responsibility.

That last clause is a little jarring for me, coming as it does at the tail end of an explanation of all the ways closeted gays end up as they do because they're buffeted by circumstance. Talking about what "the closet" does in the active voice--as if it were some kind of independent baleful force--can be rhetorically effective, but the flip side is that it makes closeted gays sound helpless and passive.

It's still not clear what Foley's situation is, but let's assume he's gay. Well, he was in his twenties in the '70s, not the '50s. Even considering all the ways coming out has become easier in the subsequent three decades, he had options. The only thing that makes his current pickle "inevitable" or a place he may have "never truly wanted to go" (exquisite euphemism, that) is that he kept making the same unwise choices. I'd bet that plenty of embezzlers could say honestly that they didn't really want to steal from anyone. They just wanted a bunch of money they hadn't earned and...well, you know.

Okay, I wasn't going to write anything more about Mark Foley--trying to keep the herbed chicken and ratatouille baguette down, you know?--but Michelle Malkin has a post that's full of links and has, I think, the best-pitched response I've seen so far to the whole thing:

What I am hearing from some conservatives inclined to pooh-pooh Foley's behavior and carry on about Barney Frank instead does not sit well with me. You can't possibly read Foley's communications with minors that have been disclosed so far--including his attempts to rendezvous with one--and dismiss them as merely "naughty e-mails."

...

At this point, I think the GOP is making a mistake banging the drum so hard over the apparent far left/MSM orchestration of the story. However long the other side sat on the e-mails and IMs, the fact is that Mark Foley--and Mark Foley alone--is responsible for giving his enemies something to spring upon his campaign in the first place.

It's interesting that so many of the same people who seem fond of referring to everyone under the age of thirty as "children" whose unworldliness must be preserved by any means necessary have taken, this weekend, to acting as if nothing short of "Lay me down and f**k me, stud!!!!" crossed the line into inappropriate sexual content. As Michael and one of the people Malkin cites say, whether Foley planned to close the deal isn't the only, or even the primary, issue. Flirtation from a powerful adult mentor, with recommendations and network access to offer or withhold, is not in the same category as flirtation from one's prom date.

And yet...and yet...calling this "child abuse" (as Malkin approves of) unsettles me. This is not an apologia for Foley, mind you; assuming things are as they appear, he's done nothing illegal, but he deserves a ruined reputation and an end to his political future. Yes, I know--I'm a childless gay guy who lives abroad and doesn't know what it's like for parents, et c. But it seems reasonable to expect people who are parents to know the difference between a Capitol Hill internship and church camp.

They should also know the individual adolescents they've been rearing for a decade and a half. Washington is an exploitative place in many ways, including plenty that are non-sexual. A teenager who is still psychologically a child shouldn't be permitted to spend a semester there away from parental supervision.

Added on 4 October: So Foley's team of handlers appears to be going for the Victimization Triple Crown--the Alkie Derby, Gayness, and the Molestation Stakes. It's a shame to have to be so cynical, and it's not the literal statements that make me suspicious. If it's true that Foley was molested as a child, it must indeed have been traumatizing, and it's certainly plausible that the pressures of his double life drove him to bona fide alcoholism. But the timing of these revelations (which Foley himself may have little to do with by this point) still smacks of responsibility-dodging, suggesting as they do that the man was simply overwhelmed by his inner demons. (And no, of course, I don't consider homosexuality a proper source of torment in and of itself, but there are plenty in the viewing audience who do.)

Added on 5 October: Thanks to Eric for the link and the (excessive) compliment. He has a lot of his own thoughts and more links to other people's, as usual; his focus is on the thought-policing angle:

Thus, the Foley scandal does what ordinary "outing" could not have possibly done. It emboldens those in the GOP for whom homo-loathing is a bread-and-butter issue, and if things go the way the activists want, maybe some of them will call for witch hunts. (According to the predictable meme of restoring morality or something.)

That'll teach the cowards in the closet who their friends are!

Whenever two apparent adversaries agree with each other, it worries me. Right now, I see agreement along the following lines:

RESOLVED: Gays do not belong in the Republican Party.

But there's still hope for these people who hate themselves. If they convert now, it's not too late.

Why, the libertarian apostates will welcome them with open arms! (Aren't they forgetting that former leftists who become libertarians are already apostates?)

Such condescension is a bit hard to take.

In my view, identity politics--especially the "self hatred" meme in conjunction with "outing"--makes non-conforming gay citizens afraid to voice what they think.

That's a first step towards not being allowed to think what they think.

Well, I do think that it's still people's own responsibility if they don't say what they think needs to be said. Still, it's sad that you can so readily come off as a brave non-conformist for being openly gay and republican (or Republican, or conservative, or libertarian).