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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
And at least one veteran of the Clinton era, epitomized by what he called the "politics of personal destruction," feels Foley will be facing this question for as long as he pursues the Senate seat. "Anybody, whether they're gay or straight, they have a right to their own sex life," says James Carville, a former Clinton campaign official and now co-host of CNN's "Crossfire." "But I doubt there's much he can do to stop this. He can have all the conference calls he wants."
And liberals will be the least of Foley's worries. Lori Waters, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum, tells Salon that what matters most to her organization "is how he votes, and he is not a conservative. If he's out there pushing the gay agenda, we're very much opposed to those things, and I would hope the voters in Florida would be as well." But even a candidate with a strong record on the issues that Eagle Forum cares about -- Foley scored 65 percent on its 2002 voting chart -- couldn't assume Eagle Forum support if he or she is gay.
"We certainly don't agree with the gay lifestyle," Waters says, "and when it comes to our decison-making for the PAC as to who we support, we have to give to people who are consistent with the values of those people who give to us." If a conservative candidate were gay, "that would be a real stumbling block," she says.
Even some of those who support Foley's right to privacy see situations in which he might have trouble continuing his refusal to answer the question. Frank says that Foley will be trying to join the U.S. Senate, "a body in which Rick Santorum is the third-ranking member. So it's not entirely irrelevant." Last month Santorum, R-Pa., gave an interview to the Associated Press in which he likened the legality of homosexuality to that of bigamy, incest and bestiality. If a GOP senator is elected from Florida in November 2004 -- Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., is currently running for president and may or may not seek reelection -- that individual will cast a vote either for or against Santorum, now the chairman of the Senate GOP Conference and a possible future candidate for Senate Majority Leader.
Francis allows that asking how Foley would vote on Santorum's anticipated leadership races would be a fair question, as would Foley's thoughts on Santorum's remarks -- which he has yet to make public. And that seems to be the problem: That line of questioning leads directly to logical questions about how Foley feels about a man who thinks that gay relationships have no more legal basis than incestuous ones, and no more right to acceptance in society than what Santorum called "man on dog." And that leads to perfectly reasonable questions about why he personally feels that way.
Moreover, in a political primary -- especially a Republican one where Christian conservatives make up much of the base, not to mention one in a Southern state like Florida -- whispers that Foley is gay, regardless of their accuracy, will likely have an effect on the race.
Carville, who hails from Louisiana, argues that there's no way to know how such a matter will factor into the election. "There are very few acknowledged gays who have run in Republican primaries in the South, so you don't really know," he says. "I mean, you can't go to a racing form and see what they traditionally do. My guess is it's not going to be terribly helpful."
Many of Foley's likely voters, Carville says, consider homosexuality "a sin and an abomination against nature." If some religious voters look at homosexuality as "immoral conduct that cannot be tolerated," Carville doesn't see how they could just brush the matter off, as Foley seems to hope they will do. "He goes and campaigns in some of these fundamentalist churches where they are, if I thought it was a sin and an abomination, I'd ask him, right there, 'Are you a sodomite?'"
If a candidate tried to evade questions about whether he attends meetings of the Ku Klux Klan, Carville says, "it wouldn't be enough to say, I'm not going to answer that. You'd have to answer that before I'd vote for you. And a lot of fundamentalist Christians view homosexuality the way I view the Klan."
