The newsmongers and Congress critters seem to be a little confused.
One: Sorry, Mr. Foley, but having been molested as a teenager did not make you gay. It just doesn’t work that way. It may have and probably did damage you a bit, but you of all people should have known what help was available and where to get it. I do feel a bit sorry for you, but you’re right that your own past is no excuse. It’s your responsibility as an adult to get it, before you perpetuate the damage.
Two: Yes, you are a pedophile, by definition. I’m glad to hear you never laid a hand on a minor in an inappropriate way, but see that syllable “-phile” there? It refers to what you like, not to what you actually do. It would in theory be possible to be a pedophile and still be an honorable person, by suppressing those improper yearnings and not acting on them (yes, IMs and emails count as “acting”) and getting counseling to rid yourself of them. Pity that isn’t what you did. Now you could make an argument that a sixteen-year-old isn’t quite a child; however, the law (remember the law? It’s that stuff Congress makes) believes otherwise.
Three: News reporters, those other Congress critters who took donations from Foley? There’s technically nothing wrong with that. They’re Republicans, he’s a Republican, he donated to their campaigns presumably because their politics are in accord. Now, if you can make the claim that the politicians in question new about Mr. Foley’s little, er, problem, and took the money to hush up the issue, then it becomes not only newsworthy but grossly immoral and I want to know about it. (Well, I don’t really want to, but I need to know.)
Four: To anyone concerned, do you suppose that Mr. Foley is the sacrificial lamb and that this not unimportant but also sensational story, covered up for so long, might possibly have been released just now to crowd out the far more important story of the great damage done to our national ethics by the President and Congress with the recent detainee law? Except I’d think the accompanying coverup here is as damaging or more so, so maybe not.