Mark Foley IMs and what the real issue is

I have been silent on this issue in my own blog but have been commenting up a storm on other people's blogs as well as on various message boards. It's finally time to weigh in myself.

1. First: the gender of the minor is utterly irrelevant. I'd feel the same way if it was a guy or girl.
2. Second: the conversation itself is pretty typical of "phone-sex" or "IM sex" -- the fact many media outlets are labelling it "shocking" because of content is silly. That isn't why it's shocking, because it certainly is.
3. Third: there is one and only one issue here and that is the fact this involved a minor and someone nearly 40 years older than that minor. If this same conversation took place between two adults, two 16 year olds, or even a 19 year old and a 16 year old nobody would give a shit. Honestly, it's not much of a turn on for anyone to read except the participants.

What is pretty sick is that this person is in a position of authority. He is by some definitions the person's employer. This would be sexual harassment by anyone's standards regardless of whether the victim is a minor or not. The minor clearly objected because he complained. Though after reading the entire IM discussion (thanks Rob for the link) I didn't see much evidence that the minor was objecting, but we don't know the whole story.

There is absolutely, positively no instance in which a 50+ year old guy should be putting the moves on a minor. I'm not even sure what motivates someone to do that. Yeah, sometimes you hear guys joking about "I wish I had a 16 year-old" but most guys wouldn't actually carry through on that.

Foley did the right thing to resign. Ironically his own law my do him in. Though in many states the age of consent is 16, which complicates the issues. I really don't care that he's gay -- makes not one whit of difference to me. What I do care about is that he's a paedophile. That's just gross. What's worse is the fact that higher ups may have known about it and done nothing. And there worse than Foley is because ultimately Foley had no sexual contact but he could have and someone could have prevented all that.

I'd love to hear what you all think about this. (I may add to this and will note changes by colour coding them. My thoughts aren't done but I feel the need to throw this out there.)