the problem(s) with mark foley

the object of his affection was 16, which is too old to make foley a pedophile, phenotypically speaking (does anyone else remember ed furlong in terminator 2?)

flirting with someone, no matter what their age, is not illegal, so foley doesn't seem to be a criminal

the situation is still creepy

it seems like he's just a regular gay guy, and but also a creep, and perhaps a self-hating creep. so to get out of being creepy, he's pathologizing his gayness

you don't have to be an alcoholic to be gay (so i've heard, but i'm skeptical of this one [sarcasm])

one is not not made gay by some kind of traumatic homosexual childhood experience, e.g. foley's relationship with the maltese priest (in fact, one would presume quite the opposite)

that relationship, while perhaps odd and against various laws, does not sound as though it was traumatic. sort of the opposite of foley's current sitch, in fact, which apparently really grossed this page out but doesn't (so far) seem to have been illegal

poor mark foley. too pathetic to even be officially labelled