The Silence of the Moral Majority

After being lectured to by religious conservatives over the threat to the family of gay marriage, I was on the edge of my seat to hear what those same conservatives will say about conservative Republican Congressman Mark Foley's sexualization of adult-child relationships. Apparently, these young people were some of our best and brightest — engaging in meaningful government service by serving as congressional pages while still in their teen years.

All I have read are obfuscations, and the claims that it's all because
he is gay and all gays are immoral.  That latter statement isn't true,
of course, and besides, it misses the point.  Much of what we are
learning from subsequent reports reveals the conspiracy of silence
that protected ex-Congressman Foley and made victimes of  many teenaged
male youths who came to Washington to explore a career, not to be drawn
into inapproriate and invasive conversations and liasions with a person
in power who pulled all the strings.

I have a niece on her early twenties who is serving in Washington as a
congressional aide. She is a woman of high ideals and strong moral
fiber, possessing a vision of a better world and eager to make a
difference. When I think of her, I am more readily able to imagine
these young people who served in Congressman Foley's offices. I shudder
to think how devastating it would be for her to have the experience of
these young people: how devastating it must have been for these young
men and women to discover that the person whom they strove to model
their lives after because of his apparent power, prestige and moral
leadership is actually himself a sexual predator and a hypocrite.

Jesus Christ saved his moral outrage for those he called the
hypocrites: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you
clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full
of greed and self-indulgence." (Matthew 23:25) Among today's
self-proclaimed followers of Christ, I expect to hear a strong voice of
moral leadership to emerge that will name the sins of hypocrisy and
self-indulgence that has corrupted the lives of our young people, and
will wash their own lives from the inside out of whatever sin or
weakness holds them (and all of us) back from charting a new course for
the coming generations.