Is Gay Activist Michael Rogers Behind The Foley “Outing”?

Sweetness & Light ^ | October 3, 2006 | N/A

[Sam Hill]

From the gay advocacy giveaway, the Washington (DC) Blade:

Blade Caption: Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R) has vowed to vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment, but gay activist John Aravosis said he decided to out the congressman anyway because Foley supports the re-election of President Bush.

Mikulski and Foley become newest congressional targets as FMA vote nears

By ADRIAN BRUNE
Friday, July 09, 2004

... Mike Rogers and John Aravosis, [are] the two men loosely heading an ongoing outing campaign on the Hill. As the date nears for a Senate vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban gay marriages in the Constitution, Rogers said the outings have picked up steam — from 13 documented offices to nearly 20 currently on a target list provided by Rogers to the Blade.

In addition to Tolman, Rogers and Aravosis, working in tandem but not together, claimed in the last week to have outed via the Web Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Republican Congressman Mark Foley of Florida...

A spokesperson for Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) also declined to comment after Aravosis specifically asserted that Foley is gay on his Web site last week...

Aravosis continued to defend the outing campaign.

“An acquaintance of mine, a Southern Republican, worked for a member who was not anti-gay personally, but he signed on to the amendment [banning gay marriage],” Aravosis said. “My friend quit. I’m basically saying, ‘You know what, you have a choice. It’s 2004. You can work for pro-gay Democrats, and now you can work for pro-gay Republicans.’” ...

Over in the House, Republican Mark Foley said in March that he would vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment — one week after his spokesperson said he would not take a position on the measure until it came up for a House vote.

Despite Foley’s FMA opposition, Aravosis purported to out Foley as well, taking him to task for supporting President Bush, who endorsed the measure late last winter. Labeling Foley as “our latest closeted gay hypocrite,” Aravosis said Foley made the list for putting politics ahead of his own community by “whoring for an anti-gay president.” ...

Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R) has vowed to vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment, but gay activist John Aravosis said he decided to out the congressman anyway because Foley supports the re-election of President Bush.

Foley responded to the reports by initiating a telephone press conference among non-gay Florida media and called discussion about his sexual orientation “revolting.” He declined at that time to answer questions about his sexual orientation and subsequently abandoned his bid for the Senate, citing concerns over his father’s health.

Aravosis said he obtained the latest information about the five-term congressman from Foley’s former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham.

Fordham, who is gay, headed up fund-raising efforts for Foley’s aborted Senate campaign and is now the finance director for one of the remaining GOP primary candidates in that race: Mel Martinez, George W. Bush’s former Housing & Urban Development secretary. Martinez has come out in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Fordham denied ever speaking with Aravosis and told the Blade, “I just don’t discuss Congressman Foley’s personal life with reporters, but I’m not sure what their motive is in outing him, other than to draw attention to themselves. Foley has a good track record with gay issues and opposes the FMA.” ...

It seems very probable that one or all of the gentlemen mentioned in this article have had a hand in the recent revelations about Mark Foley.

It is equally likely that one or all of them is behind the anonymous website, StopSexPredators.blogspot.com, that first produced Foley's alleged emails out of the blue.

Michael Rogers started his own website, blogactive.com, back in July of 2004.

Oddly enough, there was a significant drop-off in his activities there after July of this year, which is when StopSexPredators.blogspot.com was begun.

From Alexa:

 

 

In his latest post at Blogactive Michael Rogers shows he has to Mark Foley's IM account:

A word of advice...

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Mark, when the entire nation learns your AOL chat name because you hit on underage kids, it's time to block others from seeing you online:

And here is an earlier entry from Mr. Rogers:

Good news... Bad news...

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Well the good news is that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is finally getting it. I called their Director of Communications, Bill Burton, before the Foley story broke to let him know about Foley (and another case) were coming down the pike. While Burton promised to have someone email or return my call and didn't, I am glad he followed up on my call and was ready on Friday to come out of the gate running.

The bad new is they are still not paying enough attention... There are others within reach... If the Democrats would only fight half as hard as the Republicans.

I posted comments at the DCCC website on the Foley entry. Not only do their promises of returned calls and emails never come to fruition, but now they are deleting my comments from their blog, The Stakeholder.

Luckily the comments were cached before they axed them.

Here's the one I put up at 9:55pm:

Here's the one I put up at 10:02pm:

Well, at least they are paying attention.

It appears that Mr. Rogers is bragging about his coup.

And how telling it is that the Stakeholder, the homepage of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) would delete his posts.

[onyx]

Yes, I heard that.

[ivyleaguebrat]

My IM conversations are all saved automatically.. I don't intend to blackmail anyone, but often I like to go back and see what was said when restarting a conversation. DeadAIM does it very well.

[Liz]

The buzz is that this is even more widespread than we know----and that Congressional staff members are also preying on youngsters.

Government officials and employees on government workstations engaged in the viewing and downloading of pornography, or child porn, and using government resources to conduct such activities must be investigated.

Authorities have prosecuted cases where individuals engaged in activities centering on the internet (where porn is rampant). People have been indicted for viewing and downloading internet pornography including male and female child porn, frequenting internet chat rooms to engage in conversations with children, perhaps arranging to meet underage male and female children for the purposes of engaging in sexual activity.........and bringing underage children across state lines for sexual activity.


The use of government resources for such activities coerced taxpayers into underwriting the commission of crimes against children without their knowledge or consent, which constitutes the crime of second degree coercion of taxpayers.

[Wormwood]

So what?

The only person who should be ASHAMED of himself is the man who played out a sexual fantasy to a 16 year old.

Everything else is trivia.

[conservative blonde]

Let's just get all the homos and lessies out of elected office. If this latest Rat caper doesn't educate the GOP leadership to the fact that we cannot have homos/lessies as elected Republicans nothing ever will get through to them and the Rats will be able to work this scam on us again. Let's have all the elected homos/lessies be Rats.

[Bahbah]

Now he is claiming the reason he is gay and going after young boys because he was molested by a priest when he was 13

Well, that's it. He's a closet dem on top of it. Blames someone else for his wrongdoings.

[grey_whiskers]

"Outing" Barbara Mikulski is as much of a scoop as "discovering" Bill Clinton is a liar.

Anyone who looks at Mikulski's picture for more than 30 seconds can reasonably infer her orientation. ;-)

[jla]

I hope the "buzz" is correct and as many as possible of the child molesters and sodomites in D.C. are made known, and prosecuted to the fullest extent for any criminal activities.

Foley should be castrated for his repugnant behavior. But, Liz, I will tell you what is also appalling - the moral equivocation from a lot of Republicans. They willingly shed any sense of decency when they state things such as, 'the legal age of consent in D.C. is sixteen', as if that exonerates Foley!
Republicans are being very dishonest, and they will learn, hopefully sooner rather than later, that they cannot remain viable whilst standing on feet of clay.

---

"Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call Common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787.

[tutstar]

It's because of guys like him that the GOP never really had control of the House anyway.

Well at least two of us figured that out.

[Liz]

They would strip the public square of religion, faith and God, to establish the secular state over the dreaded theocracy. They fail to recognize that the flip side of a theocracy is religious liberty.

As Samuel Johnson wrote: To think reasonably is to think morally. When people lose any interest in doing the latter, they lose any interest in doing the former as well.

[jla]

Excellent post above, Liz.

[Libloather]

...frequenting internet chat rooms to engage in conversations with children, perhaps arranging to meet underage male and female children for the purposes of engaging in sexual activity.........and bringing underage children across state lines for sexual activity.

These Dateline shows are amazing. Perps will drive for hours to get their hands on what they think is a 13-year-old. Every one of them is interviewed, arrested and carted off to face a bail of $50,000.

Part II of their California sting is on this week. Dateline NBC - "To Catch a Predator", Fri Oct 06 09:00pm EDT

The TV Watch
Gotcha! 'Dateline' Paves a Walk of Shame for Online Predators
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: May 17, 2006

The "Dateline" correspondent Chris Hansen unmasks computer users hiding behind their screen names in "To Catch a Predator," tonight.

In 70's movies like "Death Wish," Charles Bronson hunted down criminals and deviants with a gun. NBC's "Dateline" uses the Internet and chocolate-chip cookies. Both methods offer the instant gratification of vigilante justice, but now the fictional version has been revamped as reality television: "Punk'd" for perverts.

"Dateline" works with a civilian watchdog group and local law enforcement to unmask would-be pedophiles using Internet sting operations. An adult poses as a teenage boy or girl online and invites a predator for a tryst. The suspect finds himself in a cozy suburban kitchen filled with snacks, only to discover the "Dateline" correspondent Chris Hansen and hidden cameras lying in wait. Since the first installment of "To Catch a Predator" on "Dateline" in 2004, all kinds of men have fallen into the trap, including a rabbi from Potomac, Md., who thought he was going to have sex with a teenage boy. Many suspects are passive and astonishingly candid when confronted: a testimony, perhaps, to the hypnotic powers of a television camera.

These raw, unscripted spectacles of men caught sweaty-handed were such a hit that "Dateline" has made "Predator" a recurring feature, usually timed to a sweeps week. The current one, set in Florida, concludes tonight at 9 Eastern and Pacific times with yet another group of would-be gropers who are offered a cookie, surprised and dressed down by Mr. Hansen, and then tackled to the sidewalk and handcuffed by police.

Television entrapment isn't new: the "Dateline" segments echo Mike Wallace's hidden-camera ambushes on "60 Minutes" in the 70's. Those fell from favor after the decade passed, but NBC's sting operations have found new traction in a era of Minutemen groups rounding up illegal immigrants along the Mexican border and self-styled anticrime crusaders who have their own watchdog television programs, from John Walsh's "America's Most Wanted" to the prosecutorial scoldings of the three cable-news crime divas: Nancy Grace, Rita Cosby and Greta Van Susteren.

Violent crime is down since the 1970's, but the public's fear of more insidious, high-tech perils stokes the ratings of vigilante television.

The "Predator" segments are as seedy and fascinatingly repellant as the suspected predators they showcase. The suspects are seemingly ordinary men, many married with children, many middle-aged and portly. A few, like a mild-looking man in his late 40's whose screen name is, aptly, "GenericWhiteMale," send their Internet prey pictures of their genitals — and sagging, hairy bellies — demonstrating, at the very least, a delusional level of self-confidence.

On last week's episode GenericWhiteMale sauntered into the house wearing glasses, a yellow tank top and shorts. When the decoy, an actress posing as the 15-year-old girl, invited him to have a cookie while she got ready, he sat down, helping himself with the expectant complacency of a blood donor waiting for his well-earned reward.

He seemed only mildly surprised when Mr. Hansen walked into the kitchen instead of his teenage date. "Is this some kind of setup or something?" he asked.

An equally generic middle-aged man whose Internet pseudonym is "Donni1957" seemed almost resigned when confronted by Mr. Hansen; he had seen "Predator" episodes before. "I know this is probably going to be on 'Dateline,' too," he says mournfully. "So go ahead, put it on." He admitted he would probably have had sex with the underage girl if she had been willing. "Yes, I do see things wrong with it," he conceded. "But I have a lack of judgment." He said it as if that were a medical condition, like diabetes, which, it turned out, he did have. Later, in jail, he was treated for diabetic shock. (Cookies were another bad idea.)

NBC ran into a little trouble over a series taped in Ohio last April when it was revealed that "Dateline" had paid the group Perverted Justice $100,000 for assistance in that operation. "Dateline" was accused of checkbook journalism, which technically would be correct if the cheesy magazine program actually rose to the level of journalism. At best, it's a tabloid-entertainment show with a muckraking streak. NBC easily shrugged off the ethical questions, and went on to set new traps in Florida.

Those who raise questions about entrapment, on the other hand, have a point. It is hard to tell from the program whether the suspects are active predators intent on luring children into offline sexual encounters or kinky fantasists tempted by "Dateline" into crossing a line. (Their Web names alone tend to sound incriminating, however. One calls himself "Importuner81.") "Dateline" tries to back up its allegations. One man kept yelling, "We were in a role-playing chat room, dude," his way of saying that he had reason to believe that his online correspondent was pretending to be a teenager for kicks. Mr. Hansen somberly informs viewers that, in fact, it was a romance site.

However sensationalist and unsavory, "Predator" is hard to fault; its targets deserve worse than a "Dateline" walk of shame. But the program's success seems to be inspiring others to try their own brand of ambush journalism. The "Today" show recently recruited a private investigator to put a hidden camera in a BMW and test the honesty of valet-parking attendants in Los Angeles. "To Catch a Glove-Compartment Pilferer" doesn't have quite the same pizazz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/arts/television/17stan.html?ex=1305518400&en=c239ee9d5e2e673c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[Liz]

I hope Chris Hansen will someday reinforce for viewers the motivation that drives these pervert/predators.

Chris ususally seems so surprised that these scumbags come from miles away, and drive for hours and hours to get their filthy hands on a youngster; some perverts say on-camera that they enter the house even while suspecting they may be entering a trap.

They pervs look normal---although skeevie---but the public needs to be informed that predators' perversions are not acting on ordinary sexual urges that normal people have.

These disturbed people are obsessed with sex---they will do anything to satisfy themselves. If it had a mind to, Dateline would also find necrophilia and other gross practices among these sickos.

It's amazing that the ACLU-PC crowd doesn't weigh in to defend these abhorrent practices based on some obscure "right."

[PghBaldy]

Nancy is scared and trying to prememptively raise issues about an FBI investigation. Nice one Nancy.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Talk about running behind....2 days later and I find this thread....found this thread from his blog.....true justice...

Now the guy is feeling the HEAT...see his blog for today!!!!

*****************************************************

To: PghBaldy; backhoe; shield

Very interesting:

Please Help....
As you can imagine, I am overwhelmed. Sean Hannity used me as a punching bag all afternoon, World Net Daily and Free Republic have posted articles full of lies.

*****************************cont..........***************

Here's the truth: I never withheld anything. They are desperate for someone to attack. I say you've attacked my community for years!! All I can add on that front is BRING IT ON!!!!

I'll be on Nancy Grace of an hour tonight on CNN letting those that hate gays know we are not going to take it any more.

Please help me with this effort. We have five weeks to save our nation from these right wing homophobes in the closet -- and there are more in Congress!

Sit tight... this is just lovely to watch from atop my Washington apartment building.

If you've ever thought of supporting blogACTIVE, this is the time. Five weeks.

29 posted on 10/05/2006 2:20:50 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (History is soon Forgotten,)

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

Very interesting:

[Dante3]

On one of the talks shows (Nancy Grace?), someone who had known Foley since they were preteens said that as far as he knew Foley was not molested, that he certainly showed no signs of being troubled or upset at that time.

[Dante3]

The problem with the legal age of consent in DC being 16 is that he cannot be criminally charged. I hope that age will be raised.

[pnz1]

Isn't this guy going to be on Nancy Grace tonight? I'm sure she won't ask any tough questions. Wonder if they will take callers?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I don't even know who Nancy Grace is.....