If anything good can come from the mess regarding disgraced Florida Congressman Mark Foley, it is a new consensus against the sexualization of teenagers. Democrats and Republicans alike professed to be appalled by Foley’s efforts via the Internet to help male teens “explore their sexuality.”

Alas, this consensus is something of a mirage, since much of the Democratic outrage over Foley is opportunistic. The Foley flap is to sexual politics what the Dubai ports deal was to the national-security debate – a rare chance for Democrats to play to the natural conservatism of the country by attempting to get to the Republicans’ right on a hot-button issue. On the ports deal, the Democrats briefly were the party so robustly committed to national security that diplomatic considerations and openness to foreigners didn’t matter. On Foley, the Democrats, for now, are as zealously against teen sexual exploration as the most uptight member of the Christian right, with an undercurrent of disgust at homosexual sex thrown in.

The temporary turn on the Dubai ports deal didn’t last, as Democrats lapsed into their support for winking at illegal immigration and for diplomatic summits to address all foreign-policy problems, thus turning off any of the nativist-leaning hawks who might have been attracted to their posture on the ports deal. On Foley, their newfound sexual conservatism will be similarly difficult to maintain. Why would anyone who’s repelled by the Foley scandal turn around and vote for the party that is usually proud to represent sexual nonjudgmentalism?

The great divide in our cultural politics continues to be sex. The cultural left considers sex all-important and not important at all. All-important because it is a crucial means of self-expression; not important because the when, where and how don’t matter so much (sex is sex so long as it’s consensual). The cultural right considers sex wonderful and dangerous. Wonderful because it is the ultimate consummation of love; dangerous because if it is not carefully circumscribed, it destroys individuals and cultures.

The reaction of Democrats back in 1983 to the Gerry Studds scandal was more in keeping with its position in this cultural divide. Massachusetts Rep. Studds had had sex with a 17-year-old male page, to which Democrats merely tsk-tsked. Some argued that the relationship was consensual, so no harm, no foul. Studds was re-elected for six more terms and must be glad that he left Congress before it became a firing offense just to send sexually charged instant messages to former pages.

Democrats might benefit politically from the odor of incompetence that attaches to the Republican leadership in how they’ve handled the Foley mess, but on a moral level, there’s been no excuse-making of the sort that Democrats resorted to when President Clinton had his Monica dalliance. No one will believe that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is going to be more suspicious of what gay congressmen are doing with the male pages – as some Democratic rhetoric implies – than Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Of course, it doesn’t take a puritan to object to a 52-year-old man luring a 16-year-old into cybersex. But this is all the more reason to reconsider the broader sexualization of teens in our culture. Britney Spears was the country’s hottest sexual commodity at age 17, but at 25 is considered over the hill. In the nation’s schools, sex education tends to encourage (“safe”) teen sexual activity, with little thought given to the fact that sexually active teens might well find sexually predatory adults (straight or gay) as their partners rather than other teens. In more than half of teen births, the father is an adult.

It would be a welcome development indeed if the Foley flap prompted a bipartisan turn toward the values of sexual probity. It is sexual irresponsibility, in the form of out-of-wedlock childbearing, that is at the root of many of the country’s social ills. But it’s not to be. Foley will be wrung for partisan advantage and then forgotten, as the culture war rages on.

Rich Lowry is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached via e-mail at: comments.lowry@ nationalreview.com.