Thursday, October 05, 2006

A minor point on Foleygate

Glenn Greenwald brings up an interesting point. What Foley did is creepy in the extreme, but what he's accused of is just talking. I'm aware of no allegations that Foley actually did anything with these pages, just that he talked about doing stuff over IM and through email. That's illegal because of a law Congress passed recently. But had he actually gotten together with the page, and fucked around? That's probably legal.

[Greenwald] argued that the "pedophile" rhetoric being righteously hurled at Mark Foley was not really appropriate, given that many (if not most) Americans live in states where it is perfectly legal for an adult of any age to have sex with a 16-year-old. The notion that an adult who has sex with a 16-year-old is a "pedophile freak" who deserves to be imprisoned with the key thrown away is (independent of whether it's right or wrong) inconsistent with the values enshrined in the laws of many (if not most) states, which provide that 16-year-olds are capable of consenting to sex (and even getting married).

I didn't see the pun in the title of this post until just now, honestly. But I'm leaving it in place.

UPDATE (2006-10-05): In the comments, MFN points out that (a) the timing is questionable and (b) because of the age difference, any relationship between Foley and the pages might still be illegal.

First, this is a story that seems to have been building for some time. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) received some of the emails in question back in July, and forwarded them on to the FBI, where they were ignored. CREW is now calling for an investigation into why. The FBI's reponses have been contradictory.

Second, the age of consent in DC appears to be 16. According to the District of Columbia Criminal Code (isn't the Internet great?), child sexual abuse has to be between a child and someone at least 4 years older. However, the code defines "child" to be "person who has not yet attained the age of 16 years." There doesn't appear to be any other relevant statute. So the Republicans have made it illegal to talk about something that it's perfectly legal (if unethical and creepy in the extreme) to do.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's already happened! From the WaPo quoting PowerLine: "Congressman Gerry Studds (D-Mass.) had an affair with a teenage male page that, I believe, included sex within the precincts of the Capitol Building. Studds refused to admit that he had done anything wrong, and turned his back on the House when it censured him for this misconduct in 1983. The voters in Studds's district didn't seem to mind; they continued to re-elect him until he retired in 1996. He is remembered mainly as a pioneering crusader for gay rights."

What makes me unhappy is the timing. Given that all the republican pages knew about Foley's reputation and there were, apparently, inappropriate comments made by him to pages as early as 2001, I find it hard to believe that some democratic pages didn't know about it and take it up the chain. Which, to me, seems to indicate that either there was high level involvement to keep this quiet (why bother? just get rid of Foley) or the Democrats sat on it until it could be maximumly politically helpful - an exceptionally distasteful thought.

Narc is right, a 16 yo is in many states able to act allowed to marry and/or have sex. However, as far as my spotty research tells me, that the partner has to be within 3 years of the age of the 16 yo or it's sexual misconduct involving a minor. More concerning to me is the vast power imbalance between the page and the representative.

Sadly, I think if this had been a sweet 16 yo girl, that issue would be more played up in the media.

MFN

Matthew said...

"Second, the age of consent in DC appears to be 16. According to the District of Columbia Criminal Code (isn't the Internet great?), child sexual abuse has to be between a child and someone at least 4 years older. However, the code defines "child" to be "person who has not yet attained the age of 16 years." There doesn't appear to be any other relevant statute."

Perhaps not in DC, but in Florida, I think the age of consent is 16, but only if the other person is younger than 24 years of age. Foley, obvious, is much, much older.

Not sure if this actually applies to anything related to the case, but the page is probably considered a Florida citizen (once again, not sure if that's relevant).

Narc said...

Matt,
You're right about the age of consent in FL. Of course, since they didn't actually have sex, it doesn't matter much. I was just pointing out (and that Greenwald originally brought up), plenty of states allow 16 year olds to legally decide to have sex, and even marry. Calling Foley a "pedophile" as many are doing, is distorting the issue.

As I understand it (and I haven't looked into it in detail) whatever law that Foley helped pass, makes it illegal to have these sorts of IM conversations with anyone under 18, regardless of what the age of consent is in that state.