THE death over the weekend of former Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress, is a stark reminder of how much all those howls of Democratic outrage over the Mark Foley scandal ring so hollow.
The Massachusetts Democrat is being hailed by national political leaders, including Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, as a “role model” who “gave a lot of people courage” by coming out of the closet.
Yet Studds openly declared his homosexuality only after an investigation revealed he’d had a sexual relationship with a male teenage congressional page and propositioned two others.
That behavior was clearly worse than Foley’s – and Studds, to his dying day, never apologized. So how did this make him a hero?
News of Foley’s lewd e-mails and instant messages to pages has prompted some mention of that first scandal, but most accounts miss the fact that the Democratic-controlled House almost let him off the hook.
In 1983, Studds and Rep. Dan Crane, an Illinois Republican, were both formally censured after they admitted to past sexual relationships with underage pages.
But House leaders had wanted to give both men the mildest rebuke – and proclaimed that Speaker Tip O’Neill had been “vindicated.”
The affair began when two former pages went public with allegations that numerous House members had had sex with underage pages and used them as couriers for a drug ring. One page soon admitted that he’d lied; the other’s allegations could not be substantiated.
But after rejecting calls for a special prosecutor, the House authorized its Ethics Committee to launch its own probe, which lasted for a full year.
The investigation determined that both Studds and Crane had had sex with underage pages, a boy in Studds’ case, a girl in Crane’s. And though it called such behavior “a serious breach of duty,” the final report recommended only that they be formally reprimanded.
A wrist slap, in other words. Neither member would even lose seniority or committee chairmanships. Speaker O’Neill approved, saying: “A member of Congress is . . . not elected to be a judge of his peers.”
Crane tearfully admitted what he’d done and begged forgiveness for “the shame I have brought down on this institution.”
But not Gerry Studds: In a defiant speech to the House, he admitted he was gay but blasted the investigation as an invasion of his privacy – and said his sexual relationships, even with a 17-year-old (Studds was 43), should not have been considered improper.
When he was finished, several colleagues shook his hand in support. The Washington Post editorialized that “one doesn’t want to be guilty of an ungenerous or unforgiving failure of human sympathy,” noting that many saw “something noble in Rep. Studds’ public admission.”
One person who didn’t was a Georgia Republican named Newt Gingrich. Outraged by Studd’s defiance, he likened the two men’s misdeeds to a teacher’s having sex with a student. “The two congressmen, like a teacher, ought to be fired,” he said.
That set off a groundswell among Republicans: To mollify Gingrich, O’Neill agreed to consider censure – a sanction that also would cost Studds and Crane their subcommittee chairmanships.
But there was strong opposition to this move: Fully 136 members voted against increasing Crane’s punishment from a reprimand; 87 members voted similarly for Studds; one pleaded that the two not be “cannibalized.”
Finally, the House voted for censure, by 421-3. But it had been led to that judgment kicking and screaming all the way.
Both men ran for re-election. Crane lost, but Studds was returned to office and remained there for several more terms. (He got his committee chairmanships back in the term after his censure.)
Most of the outrage over Mark Foley is quite justified – but not the outrage that comes from the same quarters now hailing Gerry Studds as a hero and an inspiration, instead of what he was – a sexual predator of high school students.
There’s something definitely at work in all the Democratic calls for heads to roll over the Mark Foley scandal – but “protecting our children” isn’t it.