Say it with me, kids: "Foley is a gay pedophile.

There's been a lot of chatter since this whole mess broke out about how important it is for people not to smear gays with the pedophilia brush. Normally, I'd be the first in that line. Being gay has nothing to do with pedophilia, gays are no more likely to be pedophiles than straight folks, pedophila, like rape, is about power and not sex, etc. All good liberals know the difference and how to make that argument.

But that's not the point.

The Foley scandal is a gift from the gods, and there's only one thing that matters in the next few weeks. And that is tarring the Republican party with the gay pedophile brush every chance we get. You're unlikely to see such an easy political task in your lifetimes, folks.

As a queer woman, I completely endorse the phrase: Foley is a gay pedophile. Because while I know it will further cement in some people's minds the equation gay = pedophilia, those people are lost to me already. There may be a mushy middle out there sitting on the fence of "how gay people make them feel" who harbor a variously articulated belief that gays want to have sex with children. We can deal with those folks after the Democrats retake power. A close reading of the anti-gay marriage debate shows that in fact, there is much less appetite for gay bashing than a lot of people thought. And when you look at the numbers by age, it's clear that there is an upcoming and soon to be majority population that doesn't give a fuck about what me and my girlfriends do. The Republican party shot its proverbial wad over the last few years, got little to show for it, and now...

Mark Foley, the gay pedophile has taken away their ability to ever use that issue as a wedge again. Because he's gay.

There are many gay Republicans and some of them are pedophiles. How many? I don't know. I think everyone should wonder about it. And ask questions of other Republicans, questions like "Are you now, or have you ever been, a gay pedophile?" It's irresponsible not to speculate, for the sake of the children, you know.

Schadenfreude doesn't begin to describe the delight I feel whenever I get to talk about this matter. Irony has come back with a vengence as I contemplate the details of a gay Republican pedophile about to be sent to jail for violating the very anti-pedophilia laws he authored. There are still several weeks in which I intend to milk this scandal for all it's worth, because there are more juicy details to come:

ATLANTA (AP) -- An Atlanta man told a local television station and newspaper that former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley sent him sexually suggestive messages after he served as a congressional page 10 years ago.

Tyson Vivyan, 26, of Buckhead told WAGA-TV in a Wednesday interview that Foley began sending him instant messages about a month or two after his nine-month stint as a page ended in June 1997

Vivyan told the station that when he was a congressional page in 1996 and 1997 he barely spoke to Foley. But after he left the program - when he was 17 years old - Vivian says they had contact via e-mail about things he says where inappropriate.

"He somehow got ahold of my online identity on AOL and began sending me sexually illicit ims," Vivyan said in the TV interview.

Vivyan said he became upset when he learned that the messages were from Foley.

"The fact that here is a member of Congress soliciting some type of a sexual relationship from a minor," he said.

"The conversations he started were almost sexual in nature," Vivyan said in a separate interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I would try to steer it to things he was doing on (Capitol) Hill."

Wow. That means that Foley, a gay pedophile was IM and internet savvy enough way back in 96 to know how to stalk his victims despite their belief that their online IDs were private. I guess you could call Foley a gay predatory pedophile and not just some guy with a few troubling urges. I wonder if he used Congressional resources to find the IDs of his victims?

Just this once, embrace your inner Rove. Burn a little of what you've gained in the past in order to get bigger gains in the future. Gay people can handle it. Mark Foley is a predatory gay Republican pedophile, every Republican mother's worst nightmare, and it's likely he's not the only one.

For the sake of the children, we can never let anyone forget it.