GO WEST, YOUNG MAN:

A Mayor's Secret Life Jolts a Northwest City (TIMOTHY EGAN, 5/08/05, NY Times)

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.

"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.

What's shocking about gay self-loathing?

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2005 12:33 PM