Mark Foley: Peter LaBarbera Was Right

This article about Mark Foley was written by Peter LaBarbera and published by CWA on May 28, 2003.

Rep. Mark Foley Won’t Discuss His ‘Orientation,’ but Others Will

By Peter LaBarbera

Florida columnist ‘outs’ Senate candidate

Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida and a Senate candidate in 2004, is in a swirl of controversy after not answering repeated questions about his alleged homosexuality.

“Gay rights” advocates—including Bob Norman, a columnist with the New Times Broward-Palm Beach newspaper—say Foley’s alleged homosexuality is an open secret, one that he should acknowledge to Florida citizens.

Rep. Foley receives campaign donations from the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual lobby group, and supports various pro-homosexual bills in Congress such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). His voting record is more conservative on other issues.

“[Foley’s] voting record on gay rights has become a controversial issue. He’s campaigning across Florida for the U.S. Senate. The people have a right to know,” Norman wrote in a long column May 8. “And dancing around the truth is just getting too weird to abide.”

In the column, Norman quotes Tracy Thorne, a homosexual and activist for homosexuals in the military, saying that Foley brought a “boyfriend” along on a visit to Thorne in the early 1990s.

Foley and his spokesman say they will not answer reporters’ questions about his “personal life.” The homosexual newspaper Washington Blade was told the same when it asked spokesman Kirk Fordham “point blank if Foley is gay.”

Most nonhomosexual newspapers did not pursue the story, but after Norman broke the ice with his column, the pressure grew on Foley, who is running for the seat vacated by Democratic presidential hopeful Bob Graham. (Foley has raised far more money for the Senate run than fellow GOP congressman Bill McCullum, who is also in the race.) Foley sought to go on the offensive by holding a conference call with reporters May 22. However, the call, in which Foley restated his refusal to discuss his “orientation,” only generated more press coverage.

FOX-TV’s Bill O’Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor interviewed two homosexual activists Tuesday night, and tweaked them for going along with Foley’s evasions: “Even though you guys want homosexual public servants to come out [as open homosexuals], it’s not necessary in this case? He will not lose your respect?”

Chuck Wolfe, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, which supports openly homosexual politicians, replied, “Well, respect and votes are two different things.”

Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual activist group, said, “I could care less about [Foley’s] sexual orientation,” and said the congressman has no obligation to discuss it.

Many homosexual activists assert matter-of-factly that Rep. Foley is “gay” and resent that he is not running for Senate as an open homosexual. Many social conservatives, on the other hand, argue that Florida’s voters have a right to know what lies behind his pro-homosexual voting record in Congress.

And then there are those on both sides of the “gay” debate who strictly oppose “outing” on principle.

Noting Rep. Foley’s “sharp left turn on gay rights,” Norman, the New Times columnist, writes that the Congressman’s pro-“gay” votes in Congress “were more likely motivated by his personal life, or if you prefer the cynical view, by a strategy to keep gay constituents at bay so they won’t force him out of the closet.”

Norman, a former Democrat and now independent, writes: “More than truth, history is also at stake. Foley could be, if he were to come out, the first openly gay senator of any party in United States history.”

That is precisely the fear of some conservatives who don’t want the first “openly gay” senator on Capitol Hill—whether he runs as a homosexual now or is “outed” later—to be a Republican.