was quite disturbed by watching John Walsh describe Foley as a pedophile. The youngest person Foley is known to hit upon was 15 years old.

Lets look at what the
pages
think about Foley

"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.

Another former congressional staff member said he too had been the object of Foley's advances. "It was so well known around the House. Pages passed it along from class to class," said the former aide, adding that when he was 18 a few years ago and working as an intern, Foley approached him at a bar near the Capitol and asked for his e-mail address.
The first thing to take note of is that 18 is not to old for Foley. It is quite clear that he does take an interest in post pubescent young men.

The second thing I notice is that all the pages were made aware of his interest from the gitgo. These kids aren't victims. They are not alone as prey. They had each other and the power to take him down if they wanted to but preferred not to during their time as pages.

What strikes me is that I can so identify with these kids. In my teenage years in the small town of Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, there was a wealthy eye doctor by the name of Dr Mitchell, a community benefactor to the Shaw Festival who was well known by all the teenage boys for being a queer. He hit on a lot of us. He hit on me when I was 14 or 15. To this day I do not know if the adults were aware but all us kids knew, he was a middle aged bachelor, talked "queer" and defined the concept of homosexuality for us. None of us kids that I know of, felt like victims. We reported these incidents to each other.

When I began to hear of gay bashing in general, it is these incidents which I perceived as the reason for a few hotheaded guys who felt the need for retribution.

So lets get a sense of right and wrong here. Teenage girls get hit on all the time by older men. Young is preferred for a sexual object, hence the multi billion dollar industry for the maintenance of youth. Outside the realm of sexual harrassment, there are no penalties where no physical contact has occurred.

So why should that be any different for homosexual hitting?

Foley is not a pedophile. He is however very guilty of sexual harrassment in the work place. I think we need to keep the perspective in mind.