The WSJ editorial page’s best effort at spinning the Foley meltdown is that Democrats calling for Hastert’s ouster are equating homosexuality with pedophilia.

Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys.

Looming large over that desperate claim is that betrayed conservative moralists—not Democrats—are the ones leading the charge against Republicans who protected Foley.

Though I disagree with them almost always, I do feel sorry for social conservatives. They are, by definition, behind the rest of the country in social development. They are doomed to despair in their trailers and colonial–style suburban homes as the world moves inevitably further from the morality they grew up with.

Republicans have charmed social conservatives in large numbers, promising they could actually do something about society’s shifting moral codes. Claiming that, unlike Cher, they really could turn back time. But the only political action that can be taken to promote a particular morality is to make more things illegal, and ratchet up the punishments for things that already are.

Predictably, the people who champion legally enshrined moral codes are often the ones who need state support to follow them. Foley himself introduced a bill that hoped to outlaw sexually suggestive images of children. It turned out to be too difficult to delineate the images that would arouse interest in people like Foley, and the bill foundered.

Now, in response to the Foley scandal:

Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager for embattled Republican Sen. George Allen, said the campaign would donate its $5,000 [raised by] Mr. Foley to the charity Enough is Enough, a nonprofit group based in Great Falls, Va., that works against Internet-based pornography.

Allen, bless his heart, has lit up the outlines of the sham in neon lights. He could have donated the money to something related to threatened youth, but instead he went after what we’re supposed to see as the source of Foley’s affliction: general pornography.

If only Internet pornography didn’t exist (and all IM conversations were monitored by Elizabeth Dole) then Foley might not have asked that boy for pics and he would continue to appear to be an honest representative of his district.

That kind of thinking is rotten to the core. Skipping out of an exam does not get you an A, or even a passing grade. Not having an easy shot does not make an opportunistic murderer a good person. A sinner goes to hell for the sins of his heart.

God sees right through the Republican bluff. Can Christians do the same?