For 10 years, young people ages 11 to 18 have gathered in Pasco and other Florida counties to pitch tents, swat volleyballs and sing around campfires.
Typical summer camp, save one important distinction: They do it naked.
U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, one of Washington's leading advocates for missing and exploited kids, doesn't like the idea of a clothes-free camp for teenagers. After reading a story Wednesday in the New York Times, he decided to raise a fuss.-snip -
What's wrong with your kids going to Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls or sports camps?" Foley, the West Palm Beach Republican, said Wednesday from Washington. "It's beyond the pale that this is a normal way to bring up a 14-year-old child."
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Foley, a fifth term congressman, denies that he's raising the nude camping issue to bolster his chances for the Republican nomination for Senate.
As co-chairman of the House's Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, he lobbied for the AMBER network, a way to broadcast missing children's cases across the country.
He most recently tackled child erotica on the Internet. He said he was shocked by the newspaper article about the naked camps that have been going on in his home state since 1993.
Foley suggested the camps force kids to fixate on nudity
during their impressionable, formative years. Normal teen sexual urges can become inflamed by the nakedness around them, he said.
"It's putting matches a little too close to gasoline," he said.http://www.sptimes.com/2003/06/19/State/Nude_summer_youth_cam.shtml