LGBTQ Nation blog
July 10, 2019
By John Gallagher
Proving that no offense is too great for Republicans to overlook, Mark Foley is apparently thinking about a political comeback.
In case you’ve forgotten or were unaware, in the early 2000s, Foley was a high-powered Republican in Congress, having first been elected from his Florida district in 1994. Then he ran into a bit of a problem: the story broke that he liked to hit on underage Congressional pages. Male pages, to be exact.
Unfortunately for Foley, he left a huge electronic trail because he liked to email or message pages with ideas that ranged from the suggestive to the explicit. In the latter category: asking a 17-year-old if he wanted to come over to Foley’s place for oral sex. Or asking another page for a picture of his erection. In several cases, Foley did have sex with ex-pages, but after they had turned 18.
Needless to say, Foley’s voting record in Congress was impeccably anti-LGBTQ. Ironically, given his prediliction for underage boys, Foley made opposition to child pornography one of his signature issues.
Foley was a classic example of someone in a glass closet. He was constantly being outed, and once held a press conference to describe the rumors that he was gay as “revolting” – while not denying them.
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