I had kind of a bad day at work and having to write about how incredibly disappointed I am in Sam Adams (Portland, Oregon's new openly gay Mayor) fits with the overall tone of my day perfectly.
If you hadn't heard, Adams has admitted to having an affair with an 18 year old intern back in 2005. Now, I couldn't care less about that. America in general is so incredibly puritanical about sex, but I honestly feel that as long as everyone involved consents and is of legal age, they're free to do whatever they like. It's none of my business and it shouldn't matter to anyone else, either.
What disappoints me so much about Mayor Adams is that he lied when this issue came up during the campaign and he got his former lover to lie as well.
Now, granted, he probably wouldn't have felt the need to lie if Americans weren't so uptight about things like this to begin with. But that's really not an excuse. I would have had a lot of respect for him if he'd just addressed this whole thing frankly and honestly from the beginning.
The question of the moment seems to be if Adams will resign from office. Personally, as disappointed as I am with him, I think the decision is entirely up to him and should be based on his own conscience. Adams didn't lie under oath or break the law, as long as he's being truthful about when the sexual relationship started, so I think those calling for him to resign don't have much of a case to go on.
He's come clean and apologized, and as long as he's telling the truth about everything else, I think that should be enough. Lying about legal sex shouldn't disqualify anyone from office.
That Adams is telling the truth about when the affair started is something the police don't want to just take his word on, apparently, since they've asked the state Attorney General to investigate the affair.
What a mess. I was so excited about Adams being the first openly gay person elected as Mayor of a major city. What really upsets me most is that those who are homophobic will do what they always do: jump on this one person's mistake and use it to 'prove' that all gays are after teenagers, promiscuous, liars, etc, etc.
This is so infuriating. A few years back, it was reveled that former Secretary of Transportation, Oregon Governor, and Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt had carried on a sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl while he was Mayor of Portland. No one said "See, all heterosexual males are sexual predators after little girls!" at that time, but you can bet that certain people won't hesitate to say it about gay men (politicians or otherwise) and use Adams as an example, even though Adams' lover was of age!
I can't stand double standards like this.
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