Washington’s gay Republicans — the “velvet mafia” — are caught in the crossfire of an election-time battle over who should take the blame for allowing Mr Foley to continue his predatory activities for so long.

On one side are radical gay activists seeking to expose the “hypocrites” willing to work for a party that has campaigned so hard against proposals such as same-sex marriage. Since the Foley scandal broke they have been circulating a list of Capitol Hill’s gay Republicans, which allegedly includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries and two directors of communication.

The aides are said to work for some of the Religious Right’s favourite members of Congress, ranging from Representative Katherine Harris to Senators Bill Frist, George Allen and Rick Santorum. Others, being outed on websites such as BlogActive.com, include a senior figure in the office of Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

On the other side is a deeply worried Republican Party leadership that is struggling to explain why it failed to take firm action against Mr Foley even after being given repeated warnings about his inappropriate contact with the interns, known as congressional pages.

Mr Hastert said yesterday that if any members of his staff had helped to “cover something up, then they should not continue in their jobs”.

Kirk Fordham, a gay Republican who once worked for Mr Foley, has already been forced to resign from his job as chief of staff to Congressman Tom Reynolds because of his role in the affair. He has refused to go quietly, saying that he told the House leadership of concerns about Mr Foley long before Mr Hastert’s office admits it learnt of them. Jim Kolbe, the Republicans’ only gay Congressman, who is retiring at this election, has made similar allegations.

At the same time a raft of opinion polls have suggested that the Democrats are rapidly gaining ground before November’s mid-term elections — with so-called moral value voters particularly angry about the handling of the Foley scandal.

Socially conservative organisations, many of which have been recipients of “the gay list”, appear to be turning on the Republicans. The Arlington Group, which represents evangelical activists, said it was “very concerned that the early warnings of Mr Foley’s odd behaviour toward young male pages may have been overlooked or treated with deference, fearing a backlash from the radical gay rights movement because of Mr Foley’s sexual orientation”.

Right-wing blogs are increasingly blaming the “velvet mafia” for looking after one of their own, with claims of a sinister “gay subculture” infiltrating the upper echelons of the party. Barney Frank, a Democrat and one of only three openly gay Congressmen, has predicted that there will now be a “real purge of gays in the Republican Party”.

The Republican leadership has always been remarkably tolerant of homosexuality in private, despite its public exploitation of voters’ fears on issues such as gay marriage to mobilise its base support during elections. Even Senator Santorum, who once compared gay sex to bestiality, incest and polygamy, employs the openly gay Robert Traynham as his communications director.

Daniel Blatt, who helps to run a website called Gay Patriot, said that he had rarely encountered any prejudice within the party.

“It’s harder to be a gay Republican in gay circles than it is to be a gay in Republican circles — gay activists are the most intolerant SOBs I’ve ever come across.”

He also said that Mr Foley had probably failed to come out earlier because he was ambitious for higher office. Indeed, some suggest there appears to be a glass ceiling for gays in the Republican Party which means they are tolerated in private — provided they “do not get above themselves”.

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