{"id":361,"date":"2005-05-08T15:06:44","date_gmt":"2005-05-08T19:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=361"},"modified":"2006-03-15T16:49:56","modified_gmt":"2006-03-15T21:49:56","slug":"a-neocon-gets-the-ultimate-comeuppance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=361","title":{"rendered":"A NeoCon gets the ultimate comeuppance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mayor<\/p>\n

The northwestern region of the US tends to be viewed as one of the few “blue state” areas of the country where liberal thinking is still the norm. So, I would have to say that Jim West, mayor of Spokane, WA, is quite an oddball, given his quite conservative track record. According to the New York Times<\/a> (registration required, but you can use BugMeNot to bypass this requirement<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite the moral guy, or so it seems. Because for all his espousing of neo- conservative moral values, he sure as hell doesn’t appear to be practicing them. Evidence gathered over a three-year investigation by the Spokesman-Review<\/a> seems to indicate that not only is he interested in relationships with gay men, he’s interested in gay young<\/strong> men. So much for preaching against gay sex and teen sex.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The evidence seems pretty strong, and the Spokesman-Review even went so far as to find some of the men West met via online chat rooms, and even published excerpts of the chat logs, going so far as to create a fictional gay male character to lure West into a trap<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The computer expert registered on Gay.com as \u201cMoto-Brock,” a fictitious 18-year-old Ferris High School senior questioning his own sexuality and eager to met older gay or bisexual men. Once in the chat room, which has a policy that all participants be 18, the consultant changed his age to 17 because the newspaper wanted to know whether West was using the Web to meet underage children.<\/p>\n

Within two months, Moto-Brock and RightBi-Guy were discussing sex in the Gay.com chat room, and the dialogues were being recorded by the newspaper\u2019s consultant.<\/p>\n

West, interviewed Wednesday, admitted his online relationships with the 18-year-old and Moto-Brock.<\/p>\n

After a long pause in the interview, he said, \u201cThey were both adults, and I was in public office when I dated women in this community. So what\u2019s your point?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point? The point is, if you’re going to rove about like a desperate closet-case in online chat rooms, picking up teenage gay men, the very least you can do is bring some parity between the moral values you pratice, and those you preach. It’s one thing to be conservative; I can respect most right-thinking people for truly believing in the values they try to impose on others. However, it is absolutely shameful and even a tad disgusting to espouse and impose right-thinking, anti-gay philosophies, treating gay men and women like immoral sexual deviants, and then committing the same “deviant” behavior behind closed doors, and behind a keyboard and computer screen.<\/p>\n

Oh, and unlike a certain other gay politician who allegedly used his public office to try and win sexual favors<\/a>, West is refusing to step down. At least Democrats know when it’s time to leave.<\/p>\n

One last thing: the Spokesman-Review has come under fire for its tactics, particularly in creating the fictional online character to lure in West, per the New York Times:<\/p>\n

The newspaper has come under fire for hiring a forensic computer expert to authenticate Mayor West’s online persona – he was known as RightBi-Guy in a chat room through Gay.com – and for creating a fictional teenager who pretended to be friendly with the mayor in instant messages and online chats.<\/p>\n

“It’s dishonesty on the newspaper’s part, and I would say very ethically questionable,” said Blaine Garvin, a professor of political science at Gonzaga University here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Law enforcement agencies use the same tactic on a daily basis to ferret out online predators. So it’s only unethcial when the tactic is used to catch a right-wing politician in the act?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anti-gay mayor in Spokane, WA is caught, shall we say, red handed, engaging in not-so-legal, and very, very gay, online chat activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociopolitical-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}