Eugene Robinson sums it up perfectly as always:
Let’s deal with the circumstance that dares not speak its name: How much of the Mark Foley scandal’s impact is due to the fact that he’s a gay man who preyed on young boys?
The basic story line — powerful man exploits children — would be the same if Foley were straight and underage girls had been the subject of his lurid attentions. But would the intensity of the scandal be the same? Would there be all this unseemly finger-pointing and hand-washing among the House leadership? Would Dennis Hastert be fighting to keep his job; would Christian conservatives be so apoplectic; would the whole Republican Party look as if it were on the verge of a nervous breakdown?
I doubt it. There would still be a scandal, but I think Foley’s now-acknowledged homosexuality was crucial in turning a crisis for the party into a potential catastrophe. In a perfect world that wouldn’t be the case, but you might have noticed there’s not a lot of perfection in Washington these days.
It’s tempting to put it all down to hypocrisy. The Republican Party has gone to such lengths to demonize homosexuality that it must pain the leadership to reveal that such a thing as a gay Republican congressman could even exist. The party has stigmatized gay people as “them,” not “us” — as a class of people whose “lifestyle” is unsavory and whose committed relationships must never be recognized, lest the republic instantly crumble to dust.