I Hadn't Thought Of That...

Eugene Robinson brings up a rather disturbing angle on conservatives' outrage about the Foliasco:

I don't think hypocrisy alone is enough to explain why the Foley mess is such a big deal. I think it goes deeper.

One of the central tenets of anti-homosexual doctrine is the notion of "recruitment" -- that adult gay people lure young people into homosexuality as a way of increasing their numbers. The most extreme anti-gay activists perceive a full-fledged conspiracy. The Traditional Values Coalition, a group whose homophobia can only be called rabid, goes so far as to claim that, after being enticed into sexual acts, the "young 'initiates' into the strange world of homosexuality are to be trained to reject the moral beliefs of their parents."

(...)

In any event, the recruitment myth helps explain why social conservatives, who make up perhaps the most loyal and energetic segment of the Republican Party's base, are so up in arms. And that outrage, in turn, helps explain why the party has been so frantic all week, so uncharacteristically slow to come up with a game plan for responding to the scandal. Social conservatives were already grumbling that the Republicans talk a good game but never get around to addressing their core issues. Now comes this.

In other words, the reason they're pissed off is not that Foley abused his position of power, but that he was using it to recruit more young boys into the Army Of Gay, the conservatives' mortal enemy.

The storyline about gay staffers being the real coverer-uppers takes on a whole new dimension now. Obviously, they were all assisting Foley in his capacity as an ace recruiter for their insidious agenda.