An enterprising Christianist ...

(updated below)

... might use the "Mark Foley scandal" as a means of arguing, yet again, that homosexuality equals pedophilia, thus spinning the unbelievable damage this will do to the GOP in the coming weeks into some kind of Marilyn Musgrave-style victory (good luck!). While I harbor no sympathy for Congressman Foley's gross misconduct, Andrew Sullivan's recent words are particularly helpful in understanding it:

... the news about Mark Foley has a kind of grim inevitability to it. I don't know Foley, although, like any other gay man in D.C., I was told he was gay, closeted, afraid and therefore also screwed up. What the closet does to people - the hypocrisies it fosters, the pathologies it breeds - is brutal. There are many still-closeted gay men in D.C., many of them working for a Republican party that has sadly deeply hostile to gay dignity. How they live with themselves I do not fully understand.

Although I'm not gay, I think that one only has to be a man, gay or straight, to understand the pressures, strains and breakdowns associated with suppressed sexuality. While it must always be kept under control, there is something about the male animal that makes us prone to unhealthy venting when the standard outlets are unavailable.

Mark Foley: a man undoubtedly committed to Republican ideas, destroyed by his own party's intolerance.

UPDATE: October 3, 2006, 11:36. From an email sent around by Gary Bauer of American Values, and former presidential candidate (via Digby) [my emphasis]:

This latest scandal in Washington is just further evidence that the pro-family agenda is desperately needed for the country. We are the ones who have argued that human sexuality should be channeled through marriage. We are the ones who have argued that marriage is between one man and one woman. We are the ones who have argued that schools should teach kids how to read and write and stop handing out condoms and birth control pills. We are the ones who say that all our children should be welcomed into the world under law. We are the ones who say there are reliable standards of right and wrong. And we are the ones who have led the charge against the sexualization of our children.

I told you so. Keep spinning, Gary -- you and people like you are our only hope for keeping this scandal alive until November.