Faith-Based Protection from Sexual Predators: Can You Trust Your Children with Republicans? (Bonus Sermon)

_{Image © Austin Cline
Original Poster: University of Georgia
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I hope no one minds an extra mid-day sermon — I still have something prepared for this evening that shouldn’t be bumped because it’s relevant to recent events, but even more recent events make this one relevant as well. At this rate it will quickly get to the point where I just can’t keep up and my copy of Photoshop will explode.

Leaders of the Christian Right act like they and their subcontractors in the Republican Party are the only line of defense between decent, God-fearing parents and the moral destruction of America’s youth. Every other week another self-proclaimed guardian of morality or childhood offers up a new infringement on civil rights with the excuse that it’s necessary to protect us, and especially our children, from homosexuality, pornography, sex, contraceptives, abortion, drugs, alcohol, internet predators, teen pregnancy, developing hairy palms, paper cuts, and so forth.

Now we learn that Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida, was exchanging sexual emails and instant messages with past and current Congressional pages even while they were still teenagers. If this were a fictional story created to teach a lesson about being careful with investing too much trust in moralizing politicians, people would probably dismiss it as too contrived to be believable. He’s a conservative politician who has gotten a lot of milage out of emphasizing his conservative “moral values” and his efforts to promote conservative religious beliefs through national legislation. As Faithful Democrats notes, Foley has claimed: “At Sacred Heart, I was taught how to be a better citizen because of their focus on discipline and moral values,” and in 2004 he was given a 84% rating from the Christian Coalition.

If that weren’t bad enough, he was placed in a leadership position by the Republican Party to “protect” children from sexual predators. Foley served as chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children where in 2002 he introduced a bill to outlaw websites hosting sexually suggestive images of preteen kids.

Still not bad enough? The House Republican leadership knew about this for almost a year without ever doing anything. When it turned out that he might be one of the people children need to be protected from, they obligingly refused to act. They even went so far as to hide the allegations from the Democrat who assisted with managing the House pages. This behavior by the Republican leadership was so outrageous that it may negatively impact the careers of several politicians — as well it should.

Where are the denunciations from the Christian Right — the people who did so much to support Foley and the Republican leadership in the past? It should be noted Mark Foley, a bachelor and devout Catholic, has been rumored to be gay or bisexual but he has denounced these reports as “revolting” and insisted that his sexual orientation wasn’t important. All of this should be more than enough to attract nasty commentary from the Christian Right, but people who were quick with vicious attacks on Bill Clinton for his dalliance with a female of legal age have been remarkably reticent when it comes to a male Christian Congressman’s behavior towards underage males.

Quis Custodiet Custodes Ipsos: Who Watches the Watchers? That phrase comes easily to mind, but I’m not sure how appropriate it is. To me, it has always implied that the Watchers at least deserve their authority to begin with and simply need to be monitored because they are just as fallible as the rest of us. No one can be trusted with absolute power and authority, so everyone with power over us needs to be subject to independent checks. In this case, though, I don’t think that the Watchers ever deserved any of their authority over us; so it’s not that they were improperly watched over, but that they were inappropriately placed in positions of power from the start.

What will it take for people to realize this, though?

This image is based on a World War I poster telling soldiers that boys “will look up to you” and that you should “tell them what it means to be an American soldier.” Who tells applicants what they may have to endure as Congressional pages?