He looked 18 to me.

If I had one of these hooked up to go off for sixty seconds each time I received a reply to this post, and if I didn’t make this information available to you who were reading and commenting on my post, would I be engaging in an act that was sexually exploitative? How about rape? Would I be guilty of rape?

That’s silly, isn’t it? The idea that my engaging in non-consensual cyber-sex with unwitting participants would amount to a violation of that magnitude. It would be kinda creepy, sure, and if I were an adult (and some days I am) and my readers were minors – hot seventeen year-old boys, say – whom I also engaged in sexually-explicit chat while I took my pleasure, well, that would be exploitative, wouldn’t it? A step beyond creepy to outright predatory, even?

But seventeen year-old boys are hot! And sometimes they’re hot for older women. I’m sure there are a few seventeen year-old boys out there who’d engage in a tryst with an older woman without being coerced, even. I imagine some might even be eager to do so. Would having sex with one of these hot boys make me a pedophile?

What if I were a man, and my readers were seventeen year-old girls? Ripe, sexually-mature seventeen year-old girls. In cheerleader outfits. Would I be a pedophile if I had cyber-sex with them? What about sex where there was genital contact? Am I a pedophile then? What if I merely lusted after them secretly, but never acted on these desires? Am I a deviant – someone who shouldn’t be left alone with children? A pervert?

For some, it’s not even a question. Foley is a deviant, a pedophile. “If you are gay so be it, but that is immaterial to the fact that you are first and foremost a pedophile. You don’t represent gay men, so don’t be sending out press statements announcing you’re gay as though that is tied to your actions. We don’t want and we don’t need you on our team.”

So, when did the desire to have sex with a sexually-mature person become pedophilia? Isn’t pedophilia, by definition, sex with someone who is not sexually mature?

The above blogger, when challenged on his use of the term, equivocates thusly: While the clinical definition of pedophile may specify a specific age range of the victims, I use the term in a broader sense here. Regardless of how you define pedophile, Rep. Foley engaged in inappropriate behavior. He took advantage of his position as Congressman and at minimum, sexually harassed at least one underage boy. Please don’t give me the age 16 is legal consent argument. We don’t know where the boy lived at the time of the communications, so its hard to say what laws apply. Regardless, Foley should have known better . . . I stand by my original argument that what Foley did was predatory and wrong. Getting into debates over semantics and technicalities distract us from the real issue: as a Congressman and an adult in general, Foley acted in a way that was improper and possibly illegal.

I believe that minors ought to be protected from exploitation by adults, and I agree with most everyone that Foley's actions were predatory and inappropriate. I’ve no wish to defend Foley. I would, however, like to defend the language. scott-o-rama claims that Foley is, in the broader sense, a pedophile, that he acted in a way that was improper and possibly illegal. Pedophilia “possibly illegal”? Only in some states, apparently.

I’m sure neither scott-o-rama nor all those other misguided scribes who called Foley a pedophile intended to blur the definition of the term by making it more innocuous than it ever ought to be. And I can understand why members of the gay community don’t appreciate Foley’s sudden identification with them. The real pedophiles, though – the ones who get hard for little kids? I bet I know what they’re thinking: “Hey Foley, can I get the name of your lawyer?”