By Anthony Man
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Political writer

October 22, 2006

Gays have made enormous political strides in Florida and the nation, yet advances have come glacially for openly gay elected officials.

Many gay men and lesbians in elective office remain in the closet, while openly gay politicians face a glass ceiling that makes advancement to higher office much more difficult for them than for their straight colleagues.

The decision by Mark Foley to come out only after ensnaring himself in a scandal over sexually explicit Internet correspondence with teenage boys and resigning from Congress has some concerned that the glass ceiling may be harder to break through, at least temporarily.

Nationally, just 638 of the approximately 511,000 elected officials are openly gay. In Florida, the count is 17 -- and to climb that high, the organization that does the count includes a commissioner of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District.

Even though the straight majority professes acceptance, words don't automatically translate into Election Day wins, said political science professor Dan Pinello, who specializes in gay and lesbian politics. Pinello is at City University of New York and is author of America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage, published this year by Cambridge University Press.

"The privacy of the voting booth helps promote prejudice," he said. "People will say something in public that they will do differently in private."

It's the same phenomenon seen with black candidates, he said. Otherwise accurate polls taken just before elections invariably show a higher percentage of people saying they'll vote for a black candidate than actually cast such ballots.

Leaders of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and the Log Cabin Republicans, two groups that want more openly gay officeholders, said they don't see a glass ceiling that limits openly gay politicians.

"There doesn't seem to be any cap on their ability to succeed," said Chuck Wolfe, president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C., based Victory Fund, a political action committee that helps openly gay candidates. The West Palm Beach native was a top aide to the late Gov. Lawton Chiles.

Pinello said that's wishful thinking. "I can understand where they're coming from in terms of rhetoric ... but the reality is just different."

Even successful gay candidates such as former Mayor Jim Stork of Wilton Manors and City Commissioner Larry Gierer of Oakland Park said the ceiling exists. "I would love to think that we were living in a day and age when a person's sexual orientation doesn't matter," Gierer said. "I don't think we're living in that day and age."

Jack Furnari, a conservative activist and president of the Boca Raton Republican Club, said the ceiling exists in both parties.

"Once you take out the media and once you take out the Hollywood types, most people are uncomfortable with it," he said. "I don't think it's a big hate thing. People vote for people of similar experiences."

Hastings Wyman, editor of the Southern Political Report, said a religious-based cultural conservatism exists in Florida and other Southern states.

Of the four most populous states, liberal and Democratic-leaning California and New York have the most openly gay elected officials. Florida, which is a swing state not aligned with Democrats or Republicans, and Republican Texas have dramatically fewer openly gay officials. California and New York have 33 percent more residents of voting age than Florida and Texas, but they have 274 percent more openly gay elected officials.

In Florida and elsewhere, it's much easier for openly gay candidates to get elected from areas with large pockets of gay voters.

"There's no question that having a gay base is a help," Wyman said. "The second thing is having an electorate that is fairly sophisticated and doesn't worry too much about this sort of thing."

Wilton Manors, for example, has a sizeable gay population, and a majority of its City Commission is gay.

Ken Keechl, an openly gay candidate, is mounting a strong challenge to Broward County Commissioner Jim Scott. And Rand Hoch, a former Palm Beach County Democratic Party chairman who is gay, said it would be a "non-issue" for a city candidate in Lake Worth or West Palm Beach. The Keechl-Scott district, Lake Worth and West Palm Beach all include neighborhoods with many gay residents.

Openly gay officeholders are less common in larger districts and almost never win statewide races. Just three of the 435 members of Congress are openly gay, and the only statewide openly gay elected official in the nation is an Oregon Supreme Court justice. Most states -- not Florida -- have had at least one openly gay state legislator.

A vital element of electoral success, activists and elected officials said, is having a broad array of issues and community support. Coming across as a single-issue gay candidate is a perilous strategy. Wyman, who wrote "Gay Liberation Comes to Dixie -- Slowly," for the academic journal American Review of Politics, said voters don't want a candidate they think will ignore taxes, schools, highways and other issues.

Gay leaders in both parties said the Foley scandal could damage efforts to elect more openly gay candidates.

"The Foley story will be a little bit of a setback," said Eric Johnson, the gay chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton.

Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the national Log Cabin Republicans, said any setback would be temporary. As more and more "out" politicians get elected to lower-level, local offices, they'll gain the experience needed to move up in politics, Sammon said.

Voters younger than 40 generally aren't bothered by homosexuality, Sammon and Johnson said. That's a view Pinello said is widespread among college students, who grew up with positive images of gays common in popular culture.

"You're beginning to see more and more people who could care less about a candidate's sexual orientation," said Nadine Smith, executive director of the gay rights group Equality Florida. She ran and lost a race for Tampa City Council in the early 1990s. "Time plus education are on our side."
See the full article

By Anthony Man and Elizabeth Baier
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley's decision to acknowledge he is gay didn't surprise those in the gay community who've known him for years or watched from a distance and suspected.

Gays activists cautioned Tuesday -- as they have since the scandal broke surrounding sexually explicit Internet communications with teens -- that Foley's sexual orientation, in or out of the closet, has nothing to do with improper involvement with minors.

"His sexuality was never a question. Everybody knew. [But] being gay and being interested in teenagers are two different things," said Eric Johnson, who was assistant manager of a Foley campaign for the Florida Legislature in 1991 and 1992.

Johnson, now the openly gay chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, said he never saw any indication of an interest in teenagers by Foley.

"It's definitely a shame that he wasn't able to come out when the issue was just his sexuality. When he comes out at the same time of these revelations you can't help that some people will equate that [being gay] with being a pederast," he said. "It's not true."

Johnson's view is backed up by science, said Melodie Moorehead, a psychologist who counsels patients and their families at several South Florida hospitals, including Kindred Hospital in Fort Lauderdale.

"Molestation has nothing to do with homosexuality," she said.

Foley has been accused of inappropriate e-mail exchanges with teenage boys. The term pedophilia technically applies to sexual contact between someone older than 16 and a child younger than 13.

"Any suggestion that Mark Foley is a pedophile is false," said his attorney, David Roth.

A 1994 study in the journal Pediatrics found no scientific connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. A University of Colorado study found only two of 269 verified cases of child abuse examined were committed by a gay or lesbian offender.

Rand Hoch, a Democrat and gay activist who has known Foley for almost 20 years, said he periodically talked to him about his sexuality. The then-congressman didn't think he could come out and remain in politics.

"I think he felt the people who he dealt with in the Republican Party, some of them would not continue to support him. He felt he would have been marginalized," Hoch said.

Leading activists in both parties had similar reactions to Tuesday's coming out.

"Everyone knew he was gay," said Andy Eddy, spokesman of the Broward Log Cabin Club, a gay Republican group. "The heartbreaking part is not that he is gay. It's the betrayal that went on with the young pages."

Michael Albetta, president of the Florida GLBT Democratic Caucus, said this is a case of a powerful person abusing his position.

"This does not relate to being gay," Albetta said. "A pedophile is a pedophile whether you're gay or straight. So he's gay now. So what?"
See the full article

WASHINGTON -- Responding to the scandal over former Rep. Mark Foley's suggestive messages to teenage boys, the editorial board of The Washington Times called for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to step down.

"House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once," said the lead editorial posted Monday night on the Times Web site.

The Times, one of the most reliably conservative voices in the nation's capital, joined some Democrats in criticizing Hastert, R-Ill., for not doing enough to investigate questions about Foley's e-mail exchanges with teenage boys who had worked as House pages.

"Either he was grossly negligent for not taking the red flags fully into account and ordering a swift investigation, for not even remembering the order of events leading up to last week's revelations, or he deliberately looked the other way in hopes that a brewing scandal would simply blow away," The Times' editors wrote.

"Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance," The Times said.
See the full article

Activists point out that gay politicians are not more inclined to committing sex offenses.

By CHRIS TISCH, Times Staff Writer
Published October 3, 2006

---

Fifteen years ago, fewer than 50 elected officials at the state, local and federal level nationwide were openly gay or lesbian.

Today, that number is 325.

There are mixed opinions about whether the Mark Foley scandal will make it harder for gays and lesbians to join their ranks by winning elections. Gay activists and political insiders say it won't.

"This is a situation that is specific to Mr. Foley, and it shouldn't translate or spill over to other gay candidates or elected officials," said Stephen Gaskill, spokesman for the Florida Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Democratic Caucus. "There hasn't been a huge antigay reaction or backlash at this point."

Foley has not said publicly that he is gay. His apparent interest in teenage boys shouldn't give voters the idea that gays are more likely to commit sex offenses against children, said Rick Boylan, president of the Stonewall Democrats in Pinellas County.

"I think that there are people on the far right who very much want people to make that conclusion, that if you elect a gay person, they're going to be a pedophile and they're going to have these types of problems," Boylan said. "And that's definitely not the case."

Some conservative groups have suggested gay elected officials are more likely than straight politicians to get involved in sex scandals.

The Chicago-based antihomosexual group Americans for Truth released a report Monday suggesting a high number of openly gay elected officials have been ensnared in sex scandals. It cited the case of a gay congressman who had sex with a 17-year-old boy in the 1970s, and a second who solicited a 16-year-old boy for sex in 1980.

"It doesn't mean every gay man is a pedophile," said Peter LaBarbera, the group's president. "But I think there is an aspect to male homosexuality ... there obviously is this adolescent angle."

Gay activists say voters are sophisticated enough to know that's untrue.

"The statistics show that those claims are completely baseless," said Patrick Salmon, executive vice president of the Log Cabin Republicans.

"They are being dishonest, and they are being misleading, and they are trying to perpetuate false stereotypes about gays and lesbians," he said.

Even Mathew Staver, chairman of the conservative Liberty Counsel in Orlando, said Foley is different from other gay candidates.

"I think it certainly doesn't help the gay and lesbian causes, but I wouldn't want to paint everyone with the same brush as Mr. Foley," Staver said.

Jay Barth, a professor at Hendrix College in Arkansas who specializes in Southern politics and gay politics, said Foley likely would have been re-elected if he had come out of the closet years ago, even though his district is heavily Republican.

"If there had been no evidence of underage sexual activity, my sense is he that he probably could have survived," Barth said.

Darryl Paulson, a professor of government at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, said this episode, if anything, could prompt more secretly gay elected officials to come out of the closet.

"It may lead to more openness because people ... are much more tolerant of gays in all aspects of political life," Paulson said.

See the full article

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

This year, the Republican leadership of the U.S. House touted its "American Values Agenda." Apparently, those values don't include protecting underage male House pages from unwanted advances by Republican congressmen.

It has been just four days since Mark Foley's resignation, and already the all-male leadership of the House has been caught in what we will generously call two inconsistencies. On Friday, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., claimed that he hadn't heard until that moment of improper e-mails between Foley and at least one former page. Very quickly, however, Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., said they had informed Rep. Hastert months ago. Rep. Hastert, a former wrestling coach, offered this lame escape-move of a statement: "While the speaker does not explicitly recall" talking with Rep. Reynolds, "he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds' recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution."

More from Opinion •Sound off in the blog • Columnists • Editorials/Letters • Don Wright cartoons

That's the second inconsistency. In fact, there was no "resolution." There was a coverup.

Late last year, the former page complained about inappropriate e-mails from the man who then represented Florida's 16th Congressional District. The complaint went to Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., in whose district the boy lives. Rep. Alexander first took the complaint not to Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., who oversees the page program, but to Rep. Reynolds, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee. Eventually, Rep. Shimkus and a House staff member confronted Foley, who agreed to stop corresponding with the former page. But the Republican leadership didn't follow up, and allowed Foley to continue as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. The Democrat on the panel that oversees the page program says he never heard about the complaint.

In January, as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal threatened Republican control of the House, Foley called reports of congressmen taking bribes in the form of trips and gifts "shocking, and it's scary. But I want to tell you that these things are not what normal hardworking members of Congress or their staffs are involved with." Add Foley's name, if in a different context, to the roll call of disgraced and departed Republican members of Congress since 2005: Randy "Duke" Cunningham; Tom DeLay; Robert Ney.

Since 1995, when Foley arrived in Washington and his party took power, Republicans have turned the House into an institution that serves its members and its patrons, not the public. Bad as those earlier cases involving money and election laws were, the deplorable revelations about Foley have House leaders scrambling as never before to contain damage and avoid blame. Rep. Reynolds faces a tough reelection campaign, and a House staffer told The Washington Post that Rep. Reynolds took on the speaker because "this is what happens when one member tries to throw another member under a bus."

In that spirit, Republicans competed with each other to demand criminal investigations of Foley. To investigate themselves, however, House Republicans prefer the Ethics Committee, which gave Tom DeLay pass after pass before public pressure finally forced the committee to strip Mr. DeLay of his majority leader post. Remembering that, it's no surprise that the House Republican leadership can't issue a good explanation for why it worked in secret to protect Mark Foley. The only plausible explanation is that political values mattered more than American values.

Find this article at:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion/epaper/2006/10/03/m10a_foleygop_edit_1003.html

See the full article

Some Say Party Could Lose House and Senate

By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A01

Republican strategists said yesterday that public revulsion over the sexually graphic online conversations between Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) and former House pages could compound the party's problems enough to tip the House to the Democrats in November -- and could jeopardize the party's hold on the Senate as well.

As House GOP leaders defended their role in handling revelations that forced Foley on Friday to give up his House seat, party strategists said the scandal threatens to depress turnout among Christian conservatives and could hamper efforts to convince undecided and swing voters that Republicans deserve to remain in the majority.

There was intense anger among social conservative activists in Washington yesterday, and some called for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to resign.

Republican operatives closely following the battle for the House and Senate said that they are virtually ready to concede nearly a third of the 15 seats the Democrats need to recapture control of the House, and that they will spend the next five weeks trying to shelter other vulnerable incumbents from the fallout of the Foley scandal in hopes of salvaging a slender majority.

Districts in which Republicans have effectively walked off the field include Foley's own in South Florida. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a radio interview with conservative commentator Sean Hannity that the party's replacement candidate is all but doomed. Because of ballot procedures in Florida, "to vote for this candidate, you have to vote for Mark Foley," Boehner said. "How many people are going to hold their nose to do that?"

Others warned that the impact could be much greater. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and an important social conservative leader, said "there's a real chance" that the episode could dethrone the Republican majority. "I think the next 48 hours are critical in how this is handled," he said, adding that "when a party holds itself out as the guardian of values, this is not helpful."

Foley's sudden resignation came at the end of a week that had delivered a series of blows to Republican hopes in November. A National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq is fueling new threats from Islamic jihadists faster than the United States and allies can contain them, then a new book by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post said the administration's private assessments of Iraq are far worse than officials are telling the public. Taken together, GOP strategists said, the events of the past 10 days reversed what some Republicans had seen as a modest rebound in September after the worst days of the summer.

By yesterday, a number of GOP strategists reported widespread gloom about the party's prospects, combined with intense anger at the House leadership.

Joe Gaylord, who was the top adviser to Newt Gingrich (Ga.) when Republicans seized control of the House in 1994, was pessimistic about the party's midterm prospects. He said the fallout from Foley's resignation comes "very close" to ensuring a Democratic victory in November.

"The part that causes the greatest fallout is the obvious kind of pall that an incident like this would put on our hardest-core voters, who are evangelical Christians," he said. "The thing I have said almost since this cycle began is the real worry you have is that [Republicans] just won't turn out. This is one more nail in that coffin."

Depressed turnout would not only hurt vulnerable House incumbents but also make it more difficult for Republicans to hold the most competitive Senate seats -- many of those races are now virtually even, according to recent polling.

Hastert faces a spreading revolt among some conservatives over the way he and other GOP leaders handled the matter when first alerted to the contact between Foley and one former House page. Hastert said again yesterday that no House Republican leader knew about the most graphic communications until they surfaced on Friday, but that did little to satisfy some conservative activists.

David Bossie, who runs a group called Citizens United, called yesterday for Hastert's resignation and said other conservative leaders are likely to follow suit. Bossie said the initial e-mails alone, which included Foley's request of a minor's picture, should have prompted an immediate inquiry. "That was a cry for an investigation," Bossie said. "Why couldn't the speaker of the House muster the will to stop this?"

Leaders from about six dozen socially conservative groups held a conference call late yesterday afternoon, and participants were described as livid with House GOP leaders.

"They are outraged by how Hastert handled this," said Paul M. Weyrich, a conservative activist who participated in the call. "They feel let down, left aside. How can they allow a guy like [Foley] to remain chairman of the committee on missing and exploited children when there is any question about e-mails?"

Vin Weber, a GOP lobbyist close to the White House and to congressional leaders, said many Republicans outside of Washington are echoing Bossie.

"From what I hear, it is resonating badly and our candidates are on the defensive about this," Weber said. "The maddening thing about this is if they had done the right thing" by informing Democrats early on and investigating it fully, "there would be no political fallout," he said.

Top GOP strategists said party leaders will concentrate on trying to keep the focus of the unfolding story on Foley, rather than on how House leaders responded when informed about his contacts with former pages.

"I don't know of any race ever where the action of one member has impacted the race of another," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Republicans are bracing for ads that link previous scandals with the Foley case and ask, "Had enough?" Several strategists said this could be devastating in tight races. The most optimistic scenario offered by GOP strategists is that no new information surfaces and the controversy ends in the next five weeks.

Republicans have designated state Rep. Joe Negron as the substitute candidate in Florida's 16th District, even as Boehner and others denigrate his prospects.

Republicans say they are in grave danger of losing the seat of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (Tex.), as well as those held by Rep. Robert W. Ney (Ohio) -- who agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges in the investigation into the activities of convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- and Rep. Don Sherwood (Pa.), who has been embroiled in a scandal over an affair.

In addition, Republicans have largely given up on holding the seat of retiring Rep. Jim Kolbe (Ariz.), and strategists are pessimistic about retaining open seats in Colorado and Iowa and the seat now held by Rep. John N. Hostettler (Ind.).

Some Republicans also said Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), the NRCC's chairman and one of the GOP leaders who knew about a non-graphic communication between Foley and a former page, could face an even tougher challenge for his Buffalo area seat. Reynolds and Hastert sniped at each other over the weekend about who knew what and when.

See the full article