After more than 100 stories on ABC, CBS, and NBC on the Mark Foley Internet-messaging scandal, it wouldn't be hard for the average Joe to conclude the Democrats are now the Party of Moral Values.
Democrats are demanding that Republicans return the monies Foley gave their campaigns. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader who would very much like Denny Hastert's job, is predictably fanning the flames. "We want to know," she thunders, "why the Republicans chose to protect Mark Foley's political career rather than protect the children who were in our charge."
To which I want to thunder back: Is there a muzzle large enough to fit a mouth such as Nancy Pelosi's?
Unwind that soundbite. Since when have the Democrats really been the party to protect children from the sexual advances of adults? Let's get to the point: Since when have Democrats like Nancy Pelosi cared, really cared, about men seeking out boys for sex?
There's an organized lobby for this perversion: the National Man-Boy Love Association. In 1997, NAMBLA made national headlines when a 10-year-old Massachusetts boy named Jeffrey Curley was abducted by two men, choked on a gasoline-soaked rag when he wouldn't consent to sex, was murdered, and then sexually assaulted.
Curley's parents sued NAMBLA, since one of the killers said he was discouraged from following his fiendish desires until the organization encouraged him. The Curleys' lawyer explained how the group instructed perverts on how to lure children into sex, citing a NAMBLA publication he calls "The Rape and Escape Manual." Its actual title is "The Survival Manual: The Man's Guide to Staying Alive in Man-Boy Sexual Relationships."
What does this have to do with the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi? The ever-prescient Mark Levin connected the dots on his radio program. NAMBLA easily found lawyers to defend them against the parents of the murdered boy -- the American Civil Liberties Union. Democrats like Pelosi are demanding that every Republican return any dirty Foley contributions they received, but do you think a single one of them has ever returned a dime generated for their coffers by the ACLU?
The American Spectator reported that in a 2001 "gay pride" parade in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi was just three spots in the parade from radical gay advocate Harry Hay, who avidly spoke in favor of sex with teens and fiercely advocated for NAMBLA's inclusion in gay-pride parades. Did Pelosi ever protest NAMBLA's presence in parades?
But go back to Pelosi's soundbite, because there's something there that's even more jarring: Since when do ultraliberals like San Fran Nan believe that a 17-year-old is a "child" anyway?
Consider the most sacred of sacred rights of liberals, abortion. When a teenage girl desires an abortion (or two, or three), do abortion-enabling liberals like Nancy Pelosi defend her as a "child"? Kansas pro-life attorney general Phill Kline fought last year to press abortion clinics to give him medical records of underage girls who sought abortions as part of an investigation into sexual abuse of minors. Liberals like Planned Parenthood fought for what they called the privacy of "women's medical records."
And if liberal Democrats think sex between adults and children is gravely wrong, why are they accepting massive donations from Hollywood? One odd twist in the news networks' shock-and-awe Mark Foley bombing is that their entertainment network cousins relish the very same activity, for fun and laughter, on their sex-drenched dramas.
ABC News broke open the Foley case. ABC Entertainment distributes "Desperate Housewives." During the last May sweeps, they pushed this plot: Bree, the red-headed Desperate Housewife, started seeing a man who was not only a drunk, but a sex addict. Bree's children then started trying to seduce him, and ultimately their mother came home to find her gay teenage son Andrew in the bedroom with her new beau. For ABC, this was all a delicious plot twist, a naughty giggle. No one was outraged. No Democrat returned contributions from Disney.
No, liberal Democrats in Congress are not the standard-bearers for "child protection" when it comes to sex. And neither are the news networks that suddenly are outraged - outraged, we say! - about Mark Foley's behavior.
ABC, CBS, and NBC provided exactly zero coverage of the Curley v. NAMBLA suit. (But they did briefly cover NAMBLA -- when allegations about it floated into the Catholic priest abuse scandal of monstrous Father Paul Shanley in Boston in 2002.) What of Planned Parenthood's re-labeling of children as adults to ensure the privacy of their abortions? ABC, CBS, and NBC didn't cover that controversy, either. Outrage over the glorification of man-boy sex in entertainment? Not a peep.
None of this is meant to minimize what is rightful outrage over Foley's scummy behavior, and the actions (or inactions) of anyone covering them up. It is simply to demonstrate that some have a right to be outraged. And some don't.
Voice Your Opinion!
Write to Brent Bozell