NATIONAL

Closet to blame for Foley scandal?
House report suggests aides didn’t intervene because they feared outing gay congressman

JOSHUA LYNSEN
Friday, December 15, 2006

Former Rep. Mark Foley’s status as a closeted gay man may have dissuaded aides and fellow members of Congress from confronting him over his inappropriate contact with teenage male pages, according to a House subcommittee report released last week.

The report suggests that those in the know feared an outing “could have adversely affected him both personally and politically.”

Foley’s former chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who is gay and figures prominently in the report, told the Blade in an interview this week that he agrees the inappropriate behavior was ignored for too long but that politics played “less of a role” than some critics believe.

“I don’t think there was a concerted effort to sweep this under the rug for political gain, because there was really no concerted effort to deal with this at all,” he said. “It was really a case of people neglecting the issue. Or I shouldn’t say neglecting, but ignoring it.”

Fordham said officials did not challenge Foley’s behavior partly because they “were uncomfortable with the subject matter.”

He also said it was unclear what steps needed to be taken, because nobody fully understood the seriousness or extent of Foley’s predilections until the day he resigned.

“The problem that I think occurred is that various people had pieces of information, but no one seemed to have collected all the various reports of, quote unquote, bad behavior,” Fordham said. “I think, in hindsight, a lot of people would take different steps knowing what everyone knows now.”

Fordham, who served on Foley’s staff until January 2004, said he knew only that the congressman was “too chummy, too friendly, too flirty” with pages.

Fordham said that neither he nor any of Foley’s colleagues knew the congressman was having sexually charged instant message conversations with pages until those messages were publicly revealed by ABC News.

“None of us knew the extent of the problem,” Fordham said. “So now we look back and it’s easy to suggest that people should have taken different steps.”

Fordham resigned as chief of staff for Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) after the scandal broke earlier this year and is currently looking for a new job.

Fordham said he still considers Foley a friend, but has not been in contact with him recently because of an ongoing criminal investigation into Foley’s activities.

When asked if he had any regrets about his handling of the e-mails, Fordham said, “I think perhaps I could have done better to counsel a friend on how to better deal with his being gay … At this point, I am hopeful that he is taking positive steps toward dealing with some of the issues that haunt him.”  

After leaving Foley’s office, Fordham went to work for the Mel Martinez U.S. Senate campaign in Florida. Martinez won that race and was recently named by President Bush to head the Republican National Committee.

Martinez was criticized for running an anti-gay campaign. Fordham said Martinez knew he was gay but declined to discuss Martinez further.


Report refutes ‘gay mafia’ myth

The report lauds Forham’s efforts — and those of Jeff Trandahl, the gay former House clerk — to control the former congressman’s improper behavior toward pages.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, said the report, released Dec. 8 by the House ethics committee, repudiated the myth that a “velvet mafia” protected Foley.

“The gay staffers were the most aggressive in trying to bring his behavior to light,” Foreman said. “And they, in theory, would have the largest interest in not outing a member of Congress.”

According to the report, Fordham and Trandahl, who helped manage the page program, both confronted the Florida congressman about the flirtatious behavior he exhibited in person and via e-mail toward pages.

The report said Fordham and Trandahl were among the few who “took steps to bring their concerns about Rep. Foley’s conduct to the attention of others who they thought might be able to help” remedy the situation.

National Stonewall Democrats spokesperson John Marble praised the Republican staffers, whom he said demonstrated their ability to “be responsible and act in an ethical manner.”

But the report’s suggestion that Foley’s status as a closeted gay man dissuaded his colleagues from intervening has drawn criticism from gay rights activists.
Foreman and others said Foley’s closeted status shouldn’t have deterred his colleagues from acting.

“His sexual orientation, or anyone’s sexual orientation, has nothing whatsoever to do with allegations of both abuse of power and potentially sexually exploitive behavior,” Foreman said. “It shouldn’t matter if the person is gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, male or female.”

Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the Log Cabin Republicans, agreed. He said those who knew about Foley’s behavior should have done more to stop it.

“It’s wrong to use his sexual orientation as an excuse,” he said. “There’s no GLBT organization that would have defended Foley if there had been questions asked about what was clearly inappropriate behavior.”

Foreman said it’s more likely that Foley’s behavior went widely unchallenged by Republicans because politicians feared a scandal could harm the party.

“It was a reluctance to expose a member of the majority,” he said. “Not expose, but potentially harm a member of the House ...

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