Pedomail 101, read into it, we dare you Options

[ganymede]

Let the smearing begin. Let the stupidity reign. I still have to admit, even trying to read this article and NOT think his communications were some kind of coded come-on, I still had my doubts...so I don't think I'm surprised what the neocons think they found. After all was said and done (and transmitted thru cyberspace) the poor fool quit his position.

Let's play a game. It's called "See If You See What the Neocon Idiots Did."

Challenger Seeks Probe of Rep. Foley's E-Mails to Boy, 16

"The e-mails in question were a response to a handwritten thank-you letter from a former page," said Jason Kello, Foley's spokesman. "There have not been any allegations made by anyone except by Tim Mahoney and the Democrats who are attempting to misrepresent a series of innocent communications to prop up a failing political campaign."

In the brief but chatty e-mails, which were first reported by ABC News, Foley asked how old the boy was, inquired what he wanted for his birthday, requested a picture of the young man and told him that he had just finished a long bike ride and was going to the gym.

According to ABC, the boy forwarded the e-mail that requested his picture to an unidentified congressional staffer and wrote that the e-mail was "sick sick sick sick sick." In another e-mail to a staffer, ABC reported, the boy wrote: "Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out."

Kello said that around the time the boy was leaving his job as a page, or House floor assistant, in the summer of 2005, the boy handed Foley a card "thanking him for being a friendly face." The boy then returned to his home in Louisiana. Foley kept in touch with him, especially around the time of Hurricane Katrina. "He was concerned about the kid because he knew he was from Louisiana," Kello said.

The e-mail, which ended "send me a pic of you as well," began, "How are you weathering the hurricane . . . are you safe." Kello said Foley asked what the boy wanted for his birthday because in a previous e-mail, a copy of which has not been published, the boy had informed the congressman that he was celebrating a birthday.

Foley was familiar and friendly in his e-mails. In one, he wrote, "did you have fun at your conference" and "what stuff do you like to do." In another, he wrote, "Glad your home safe and sound" and "its nice here . . . been raining today." In a third, Foley referred to someone named Will and said, "hes such a nice guy . . . acts much older than his age . . . and hes in really great shape."

I've been brief but chatty in plenty of gay bars. And a whole lot more direct. What's odd about the way I might read these, I'm deliberately superimposing my "gay agenda," but it's not what some random detractor might. I can wish on this whatever Ilike, but I can still see it as innocuous nonsense. Why couldn't they? If he already quit, I guess there was either some truth to the matter, or he just couldn't get over this smear.

Now, if only everyone else would stop seeing gay-ness as a smear...regardless of how stupidly misdirected it might be.

[PalePhoenix]

And another sordid chapter creeps across the bottom of your news broadcast screens. Now, seemingly in anticipation of being named by the in-rehab Foley, a former priest--currently trolling for little Italian boys, it seems--has decided to codify what he believes Foley may have "perceived as inappropriate."

From his home on the island of Gozo, a part of Malta off the Italian coast, the priest, Anthony Mercieca, described a series of encounters that he said Mr. Foley might have perceived as sexually inappropriate. Among them: massaging Mr. Foley while the boy was naked, skinny-dipping with him at a secluded lake and being naked in the same room on overnight trips.

Of course, he denies actual sex with Foley, and claims he was on, you guessed it, drugs (tranquilizers) at the time and "not in his right mind." Now, while in the context of parochial schools in the late 1960s, I suppose both swimming in the nude and being undressed in the same room can be viewed as "within the outer limits of plausible, without necessarily seeming 'dirty.'" Which is probably exactly what he wants us to think. Other "inappropriate acts" were mentioned, but never sex, implying--just going out on a limb here--penetrative intercourse of the non-oral variety. Foley would have been in his teens at the time, or slightly younger than a Congressional page.

Again, being gay, and/or using drugs and alcohol, doesn't make you a pederast. Are we all on the same page now?

[Archemini]

It was only time before the priest came forward or was mentioned, but glad to know that he knows what could and could not have been regarded as sexual or not sexual when he was with Foley. Massaging while naked...generally when I get massages I do take all of my clothes off...then again it's not by a priest and I was never a young teen when I was getting them. Skinnydipping or changing..pretty typical I'd say, and while possibly disturbing judging the participants, not inherently wrong. Like you said, he denies sex, of what he considers sex that is, and claims all these things were done while UTE. Such a typical defense these days that it is surprising that people even buy into it anymore.

The next time claims that it was them being under the influence when they did their crime, I say the judge and jury go and get absolutely TANKED and then condemn the person to a life of misery in jail, because you know..they did it while under the influence..they weren't really sure what the outcome would be.

[PalePhoenix]

And when he said he was "under the influence," does that mean he's been drunk for the past decade?

They met on the House floor. He was a 16-year-old political junkie, dressed in the drab navy blazer and gray slacks of a congressional page, rushing phone messages to the members he served. Rep. Mark Foley was tanned and charismatic, a successful politician in his mid-40s willing to joke with him between votes.

They talked perhaps a dozen times. Then at his page graduation ceremony that June, in 2002, he was excited when Foley appeared, uninvited, and dictated his personal e-mail address for the boy to jot in his memory book. "I started contacting him right away," the young man recalled. "I knew a congressman that I . . . talked to online. That was pretty cool."

The messages were innocent at first. But after the young man moved home, he recalled, Foley started asking about "my roommates, if I ever saw them naked." Within months, the congressman was dangling a job offer, "because I was a hot boy," he said. Two years later, when he contacted Foley for advice on D.C. hotels, the congressman wrote back: "You could always stay at my place. I'm always here, I'm always lonely, and I'm always up for oral sex."

Per the article's title, Foley clearly had the presence of mind to skirt the rules to avoid detection and incrimination. This is entirely typical of child predators. It has even been demonstrated that they'll marry women to get at their kids. I also don't buy the whole "cycle of abuse" fandango. That's not a valid excuse in every single instance, or even most of them. We just don't HEAR about the people who were molested/exploited, adjusted, grew up, and never felt compelled to perpetuate the crimes perpetrated upon them.

[circle6]

We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg, I'm afraid. Wait until after the elections, when there's so much less for some to lose.

Like former governor McGreevey (whose SMARMY, insincere, self-absorbed interview in this month's GQ made me retch), I do not want Mark Foley and the good Father associated with that part of me that others may call "gay."

While many of us believe that our sexual orientation and attraction may be innate, using one's position and/or influence to entrap, abuse, deceive, or endanger is not something that we'd blame soley on being gay. Fortunately, most non-mouth-breathers know that. But it still sells books and gives Bill O'Reilly another group to bully.



(Above: Dana McGreevey looks forward to a meeting with her attorney, her financial planner, and a South African assasin later in the day, while her soon-to-be ex-husband Jim looks foward to yet another furtive rest area tryst with a well-endowed trucker he only knows as "Scabby Dawg".)

[Semperfidel]

McGreevey may be self-indulgent, callous jerkwad, but he's not diddling any Boy Scouts that we know of. What might it have been like if we didn't let Foley get off easy with some mea culpas and a little time in "rehab?" How about the death penalty for pedophiles?

The idea of executing child rapists, even when there in no loss of life, is making headway in the United States.

The Louisiana Supreme Court last week upheld the death sentence for a pedophile, and the governor of Texas is soon to sign into law legislation to that effect. In 1995, Louisiana was the first state to adopt legislation authorizing the death penalty for child rapists.

Ten years later, the movement to make pedophilia punishable by death really picked up steam after nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford was raped and buried alive in Florida by a man with a prior conviction for sex crimes. Various versions of the "Jessica Law" sprang up all over in the country, imposing in most cases a minimum 25 year jail sentence and the wearing of an ankle bracelet for life for raping a child aged 12 or younger.

But in some states, elected officials amended their versions of the "Jessica Law" by adding the possibility of condemning a pedophile to death. They include Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Georgia and Montana.

An overwhelming majority of lawmakers in Texas chose to join the list. Texas is responsible for a third of all executions carried out in the United States in the past 30 years and for two-thirds of those conducted so far this year. The draft law is now on the desk of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has promised to sign it.

The idea seems to go against the grain in the rest of the country, where the death penalty is losing ground because of grave judicial errors and botched executions. Organizations defending the rights of crime victims have differing views on the proposals.

Moreover, it is uncertain that executing non-murderers will comply with the US constitutional mandate barring "cruel and unusual" punishment. The only man among more than 3,300 prisoners on death row who stands to lose his life under the new law is 42-year-old Patrick Kennedy, who was sentenced to death in Louisiana in 2003 for raping his companion's eight-year-old daughter.

In 1977, the US Supreme Court invalidated the death sentence of a rapist, arguing the punishment was disproportionate to the crime. Later, evoking "evolving standards of decency," the court also rejected the death penalty for criminals who were minors or mentally retarded at the time they committed their crimes. But on Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Kennedy.

It argued that "given the appalling nature of the crime, the severity of the harm inflicted upon the victim, and the harm imposed on society, the death penalty is not an excessive penalty for the crime of rape when the victim is a child under the age of 12 years old."

The US Supreme Court could rule on the case next year... (read more)

[PalePhoenix]

What is this, "Kill 'em all, let the Supreme Court sort 'em out?"

[ganymede]

Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem, despite years of parental anxieties and media hype.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report compared such fears to a “moral panic” and concluded that the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was a member of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons...” (read more)

PervertedJustice.com just went "Whoops, our bad. Sorry we've been trolling chat rooms for pedophile for years now." To Catch a Predator is out of business too. Pity they always seem to keep finding these people who don't exist.