Who is fighting the war against child exploitation?
Latin America is watching U.S. lawmakers, as they search for help in answering questions such as the legality of gay marriage and ways to battle child exploitation.
Recent news that Florida Rep. Mark Foley was engaging in inappropriate behavior is unacceptable even to Miamian standards of morality.
Not because it has been aired, but because his attraction to minors has remained out of the public eye for so long.
Foley resigned after sending sexually explicit e-mails to former teen male congressional pages.
Clearly, a government that would admit a man such as Foley to be chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children is a government that fails at practicing successful checks and balances.
Without those blatant messages, Foley would have passed as a decent gay man in the closet. His record reflects an effort to protect children.
In 2002, Foley proposed a bill attacking web sites exploiting children. He was also an advocate of the Adam Walsh Act.
A few months ago, Foley was at a signing ceremony for the Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
In an attempt to explain the parody, Foley, who has never been married, confirmed rumors that he was gay.
Foley later revealed he was abused as a teen and admitted he suffers from alcoholism.
Both revelations imply that he is a victim of an unidentified abuser and a certified disease that plagues elite clubs in Washington Avenue. People in Miami can identify with that.
In observing the darkness of Foley's acts, it is important to note that being a gay Republican is not ilegal, nor is having a disease, but trying to seduce minors is.
Point made, some one please tell Ann Coulter the public is not alarmed because Foley is gay, and the scandal is not motivated by gay bashing.
"We Republicans [unlike Democrats] do not hate gay people, we just don't want them to get married," said Coulter in an interview with Fox. She minimized the issue by failing to mention the facts: Lawmakers should not be attempting to seduce teens.
When former Gov. of New Jersey James E. McGreevey, a Democrat, confessed that he was gay, his wife stood by him.
In front of national television, McGreevey said he had been cheating on his wife with another man. A man that he had added to his staff without the proper qualifications.
In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey McGreevy presented his new biography, Confessions, where he admits to having had casual sex in bathrooms, and even engaged with male prostitutes.
He allowed the public to meet his boyfriend, and gave Americans their happy ending with images of his home, holding hands with a handsome green-eyed man.
He said he was in love with the man of his dreams.
Gay romanticism parades through the streets of Ocean Drive. Any one who lives in Miami will not be surprised to walk down Lincoln Road and see men embracing their need for affection. No one cares. No one is surprised or scandalized.
No one is arrested for disrupting the peace.
People in Miami are generaly respected for their courage to show their true self. In this sense McGreeve, who once claimed to be against gay marriage and is now an advocate of it, is admired in South Beach.
To understand this, simply stroll by Collins Avenue, from 10th to 15th Street. Women walk in revealing outfits. It is difficult to tell the clubber, from the woman on the job, from the transvestite, to the cross-dresser apart.
This block is also a popular spot for both female and male prostitutes. Miami-Dade and Miami Beach police are known to camouflage in this crowd to catch those who put a price on sex. And for those people anything goes in South Beach.
However, most people familiar with the area would agree that easy accessibility to children does not exist. For that, a flight to a nearby country may be required.
Even sexually uninhibited South Beach has its limits.
Children are not allowed.
Although sadly no one would be surprised to find that a crack house in Overtown or Liberty City, a few of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami, may have trapped a few in a hell hole of abuse.
In the darkness of illegality most would say that in the subjective Miamian line of values and morality child exploitation is lower than a drug induced rape. It is just the lowest of low.
More concerning is that this is happening in one of the richest countries in the world.
About 20 minutes from South Beach, Little Haiti in Miami has been known to be home to girls brought ilegally from Haiti as sex slaves and house maids.
A UNICEF report says that 2,000 children a year are trafficked to the Dominican Republic from Haiti with their parents' consent.
In Homestead, a farming town about 45 minutes from South Beach, is home to undocumented Mexican teens who are too afraid to face their abusers for fear of being returned to their home country.
Only three hours away from Miami, in Colombia, approximately 3 million people (75 percent of them women and children) have been internally displaced by violence in the past 15 years, said a recent UNICEF report.
The same report also says that in anticipation of the vulnerability officials at an International Meeting on Sex Tourism, proposed strategies that are being adopted to protect children from sexual exploitation. The success is unknown.
The situation remains decadent in Brazilian slums, a haven for predators, where society has come to accept the behavior, as 54 million people live below the poverty line, according to UNICEF.
The exploitation of millions of children is an issue that concerns the world.
The hope is that at some point politicians engaging in behavior like Foley’s will be held accountable, because if they are not then who will be?
Latin America is watching U.S. lawmakers, as they search for help in answering questions such as the legality of gay marriage and ways to battle child exploitation.
Recent news that Florida Rep. Mark Foley was engaging in inappropriate behavior is unacceptable even to Miamian standards of morality.
Not because it has been aired, but because his attraction to minors has remained out of the public eye for so long.
Foley resigned after sending sexually explicit e-mails to former teen male congressional pages.
Clearly, a government that would admit a man such as Foley to be chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children is a government that fails at practicing successful checks and balances.
Without those blatant messages, Foley would have passed as a decent gay man in the closet. His record reflects an effort to protect children.
In 2002, Foley proposed a bill attacking web sites exploiting children. He was also an advocate of the Adam Walsh Act.
A few months ago, Foley was at a signing ceremony for the Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006.
In an attempt to explain the parody, Foley, who has never been married, confirmed rumors that he was gay.
Foley later revealed he was abused as a teen and admitted he suffers from alcoholism.
Both revelations imply that he is a victim of an unidentified abuser and a certified disease that plagues elite clubs in Washington Avenue. People in Miami can identify with that.
In observing the darkness of Foley's acts, it is important to note that being a gay Republican is not ilegal, nor is having a disease, but trying to seduce minors is.
Point made, some one please tell Ann Coulter the public is not alarmed because Foley is gay, and the scandal is not motivated by gay bashing.
"We Republicans [unlike Democrats] do not hate gay people, we just don't want them to get married," said Coulter in an interview with Fox. She minimized the issue by failing to mention the facts: Lawmakers should not be attempting to seduce teens.
When former Gov. of New Jersey James E. McGreevey, a Democrat, confessed that he was gay, his wife stood by him.
In front of national television, McGreevey said he had been cheating on his wife with another man. A man that he had added to his staff without the proper qualifications.
In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey McGreevy presented his new biography, Confessions, where he admits to having had casual sex in bathrooms, and even engaged with male prostitutes.
He allowed the public to meet his boyfriend, and gave Americans their happy ending with images of his home, holding hands with a handsome green-eyed man.
He said he was in love with the man of his dreams.
Gay romanticism parades through the streets of Ocean Drive. Any one who lives in Miami will not be surprised to walk down Lincoln Road and see men embracing their need for affection. No one cares. No one is surprised or scandalized.
No one is arrested for disrupting the peace.
People in Miami are generaly respected for their courage to show their true self. In this sense McGreeve, who once claimed to be against gay marriage and is now an advocate of it, is admired in South Beach.
To understand this, simply stroll by Collins Avenue, from 10th to 15th Street. Women walk in revealing outfits. It is difficult to tell the clubber, from the woman on the job, from the transvestite, to the cross-dresser apart.
This block is also a popular spot for both female and male prostitutes. Miami-Dade and Miami Beach police are known to camouflage in this crowd to catch those who put a price on sex. And for those people anything goes in South Beach.
However, most people familiar with the area would agree that easy accessibility to children does not exist. For that, a flight to a nearby country may be required.
Even sexually uninhibited South Beach has its limits.
Children are not allowed.
Although sadly no one would be surprised to find that a crack house in Overtown or Liberty City, a few of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami, may have trapped a few in a hell hole of abuse.
In the darkness of illegality most would say that in the subjective Miamian line of values and morality child exploitation is lower than a drug induced rape. It is just the lowest of low.
More concerning is that this is happening in one of the richest countries in the world.
About 20 minutes from South Beach, Little Haiti in Miami has been known to be home to girls brought ilegally from Haiti as sex slaves and house maids.
A UNICEF report says that 2,000 children a year are trafficked to the Dominican Republic from Haiti with their parents' consent.
In Homestead, a farming town about 45 minutes from South Beach, is home to undocumented Mexican teens who are too afraid to face their abusers for fear of being returned to their home country.
Only three hours away from Miami, in Colombia, approximately 3 million people (75 percent of them women and children) have been internally displaced by violence in the past 15 years, said a recent UNICEF report.
The same report also says that in anticipation of the vulnerability officials at an International Meeting on Sex Tourism, proposed strategies that are being adopted to protect children from sexual exploitation. The success is unknown.
The situation remains decadent in Brazilian slums, a haven for predators, where society has come to accept the behavior, as 54 million people live below the poverty line, according to UNICEF.
The exploitation of millions of children is an issue that concerns the world.
The hope is that at some point politicians engaging in behavior like Foley’s will be held accountable, because if they are not then who will be?
