The word, "idiocy," according to Dictionary.com, means, "utterly senseless or foolish." Accordingly, one of the most commonly used arguments used by anti-polygamists - the exploitation of anecdote to define all - clearly falls into that definition. And as a new scandal swarmed around the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on September 29, 2006, a rhetorical tool was thereby created with which to immediately expose the obvious idiocy of that most commonly used anti-polygamy argument.
Mark Foley was one of the incumbent Representatives from Florida. As a Republican, he served in various capacities, including being co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. On June 18, 2003, Rep. Foley urgently called for an investigation into a nudist camp for pre-teens and teens in Florida. On March 9, 2005, Foley introduced a bill in Congress to ban "child modeling" websites which he declared were only used as a "fix for pedophiles."
In November 2005, however, Rep. Foley had been caught sending some rather "flirtatious" email to a 16 year old male congressional page. He had also been reported to have sent even more illicit text messages to other young male pages as far back as 2003. Not only was the content of the communications obviously homosexual and salacious, but Foley was sending them to underaged males - teenagers whose families trusted their safety in Washington D.C. as congressional pages. Scandalous! Here was a Republican congressman behaving homosexually - and he was doing so toward underaged males.
As the scandal broke, Foley immediately resigned, publicly identifying himself as "gay" for the first time and claiming to have been abused by clergy when he was young. As well, the Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, was reported to have allegedly been previously informed of Foley's behaviors as far back as 2003 – but had not taken any action. Staffworkers for Speaker Hastert claimed to have been informed about Foley, but they reportedly chose not to inform the Speaker. Thereby, Hastert asserted that he "did not know."
Aside from making allegations of cover-up, though, Democrats really would not have much else to use against Republicans in this scandal. There were also reports that they, too, knew about Foley - yet they had chosen to wait until near the November 7, 2006, election to let the scandal "break."
So how else could Democrats potentially use this scandal to attack Republicans? Aside from the double-edged sword of making cover-up allegations, Democrats could suggest in their political attack ads that the rare example of Republican Foley's homosexual attraction for teenage males supposedly proves that all Republicans are therefore homosexual pederasts.
It, obviously, does not take a genius to recognize the idiocy of such a ridiculous assertion. And even most Democrats are probably not likely to resort to such an argument, ether.
But even though most people - including Democrats - would likely not be so foolish as to use that argument there, that kind of idiocy is frequently used in another issue. As any normal pro-polygamist will testify, anti-polygamists use it incessantly – including Democrats and Republicans.
Citing quite rare – but sensationalized in the media - examples of older men with underaged females, where polygamy just happens to be involved too, anti-polygamists very frequently do make the identical argument. Warren Jeffs - the leader of a rogue Mormon-based sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ("FLDS") - is the latest example. A fugitive on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List, he was eventually captured on August 29, 2006 - with great media sensationalism. Anti-polygamists exploited the "accomplice to child rape" charges against Jeffs to assert that such charges are supposedly definitive of all polygamists. They refused to acknowledge that Jeffs' unique form of Mormon Polygamy is different from other forms, and that it is even more different than such benevolent forms as Christian Polygamy.
It does not matter how many times or how loudly that normal, consenting-adult pro-polygamists voice their opposition to Warren Jeffs, criminals, and abusers. Anti-polygamists still insist on defining all polygamists by such rare examples. But such "anecdote defines all" argument is obviously "utterly senseless" – the very definition of idiocy.
And that is how the Foley scandal instantly exposes that idiocy. To say that Warren Jeffs' "FLDS marriages" of underaged females proves that all polygamists are child raping criminals is as utterly senseless as saying that Mark Foley's homosexual communications with underaged males proves that all Republicans are homosexual pederasts.
The argument proves nothing except the idiocy of the argument itself.
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Bibliographic URLs:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/idiocy
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pederasty
http://www.cnsnews.com/Culture/archive/200306/CUL20030620a.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/Culture/Archive/200306/CUL20030620b.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/Politics/Archive/200503/POL20050309a.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/Commentary/archive/200610/COM20061004a.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/Politics/archive/200610/POL20061003a.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15147265/
http://www.humanevents.com/rightangle/index.php?id=16914
&title=house_republicans_wants_democrats_to_app
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52295
[Reviewed for publication - Pro-Polygamy.com Review Board.]
