Well, Mayor West has made the big time. The New York Times has a story tomorrow on the Mayor's gay.com antics...even giving us his screen name: RightBi-Guy.
The piece, "A Mayor's Secret Life Jolts a Northwest City" gives the highlights (or lowlights):
Over the last three months, Mayor James E. West of Spokane, one of the most powerful politicians in this state, carried on an online exchange - full of mutual compliments and often overtly sexual - with someone who said he was a 17-year-old high school senior. In time, the mayor, 54, revealed his identity, and said he had lots of sports memorabilia he could give the boy from his office. As they prepared to meet for the first time, the mayor professed his nervousness, and his caution.No comments from the Radical right-wingers yet. But, maybe that's because Mayor West doesn't really like the homos:
"Guys like you don't come along very often and I want it to last," the mayor wrote. "Am I crazy here?"
The two never met. The high school senior was a fiction, created by The Spokesman-Review, a Spokane newspaper, as part of a three-year investigation into whether Mayor West, a Republican, used his authority to have sex with boys and young men.
The mayor has denied the most serious accusations by the paper this week: that he molested two boys more than 25 years ago when he was a sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader. But he acknowledged having the online conversations and said he had "relationships" with men.
People in the state were shocked, in part because Mayor West is a staunch opponent of gay rights, and recently threatened to veto a measure passed by the City Council that would grant benefits to domestic partners. He once promoted a bill in the Legislature to outlaw teenage sex, gay or straight.
The mayor insists he will never step down despite calls for his resignation from one council member. On Friday, Mayor West walked around a downtown riverfront park, refusing requests for interviews, and saying he had another 1,149 days to serve.
In one of the online chats that the newspaper recorded, Mayor West talked about his ambiguous feelings.Isn't that standard operating procedure for the right wingers who are on the down-low? Bash the gays by day, sleep with them by night. And, if you really don't like the homos, don't want to hang out with them, don't go to the gay grocery store....aren't you really not like them?
"Remember, I'm very closeted. No one knows I like guys," he wrote. "It's just that the openly gay guys are a little over the top for me. I don't really like the in-your-face attitude some guys have. And the massive political agenda either."
And another thing, Mayor, we need the "massive political agenda" to protect ourselves from you and the other hate-filled politicians who like to kick around the homos.
Unfortunately, I think Mayor West is just one of many hard-core, gay-bashing GOPers on the down low. It's just most of their stories don't end up in the NY Times.
