That being said, I had a friend who was a liberal who used to argue that if a politician lies about his personal life, it shouldn't matter, even if he cheats or what not. I used very simple logic to explain why it is important.
If somone is married, or has a family or whatever, and he can lie to them, what makes you think, he won't lie to you about an issue, if they can lie to somone they are supposed to love and who trusts them so much, do you really think they might not vote a different way for convenience.
As for being gay, if he's going to play games with it, it leaves him open to blackmail, if some dem, can get photo's or produce an ex-boyfried, they could use it as leverage to get him to vote the way they want on an issue, or even worse, just use it to hammer away at his concervative base, by using the "role model" example or calling him a hypocrit, in that republicans, and I'm sure Foley is going to be one of them, do campaign towards christian groups to get there vote, if they condemn homosexuality, and he goes trying to get there vote, that makes him look like a political whore, and can be used to hammer other republicans as "sell outs" to big business, who use and lie and manipulate there social conservative religious base.