In a stunning admission of partisanship the editor of the Spokane Spokesman Review, Steven A. Smith, admits in print that his paper has adopted the tactics of the fringe homosexual activists who’ve led a campaign to out conservative legislators and officials. Most prominent gay organizations have specifically condemned the outing campaigns carried out on blogs like BlogActive and AmericaBlog, whose tactics the Spokesman Review appears to be imitating.
In a series of headline stories today, the Spokesman Review details a three year investigation into the private life of Spokane’s Republican mayor Jim West.
For a quarter century, the man who is now Spokane’s mayor has used positions of public trust – as a sheriff’s deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician – to develop sexual relationships with boys and young men.
One man claims in a court deposition that Jim West molested him in the mid-1970s when he was a boy and West was a Spokane County sheriff’s deputy and Boy Scout leader. A second man also accuses West of sexual abuse during the same era, including an incident at Camp Cowles, a Boy Scout camp on Diamond Lake.
In addition, an investigation by The Spokesman-Review has revealed that 17 months after leaving the state Legislature, West has used the trappings of the mayor’s office to entice and influence young men he met on a gay Web site.To which the mayor replied:
Today a series of articles in The Spokesman-Review leveled allegations against me about my private life. I am a law-abiding citizen, and I believe my public record of service stands on its own merit.
Allegations about my private life were two-fold. I categorically deny any allegations about incidents that supposedly occurred 24 years ago as alleged by two convicted felons and about which I have no knowledge. The newspaper also reported that I have visited a gay chat line on the Internet and had relations with adult men. I don’t deny that.Most illuminating is the timeline of the papers investigation.
Follow the logic of that timeline. The Spokesman Review has two allegations from convicted felons they received via the whisper vine, for which there’s no corroborating evidence nor apparently any criminal investigations. The paper has these two allegations shelved for several years, before mounting an online sting operation to prove that the mayor is gay. Once their sting establishes that the mayor is in fact gay (or bisexual), they use his homosexuality as an excuse to also report on the uncorroborated charges from 24 years ago. Is the paper stereotyping homosexuals as child molesters to make its case?
In case you think that’s the only shocking display of questionable journalistic ethics, here’s the real appalling part of the story. Spokesman Review editor Steven A. Smith adopts the logic of homosexual activist Michael Rodgers (in his BlogActive GOP outing campaign) in his defense of the newspapers work (emphasis mine):
Through the use of public records, court documents, first-person accounts and a forensic computer expert, the newspaper has uncovered evidence that West has led a secret life for more than 25 years. Beyond the serious allegations of sexual abuse, West had been using his position in the Legislature to block gay-rights legislation. And he has been trolling the Internet for young lovers while while serving as mayor of Spokane, offering gifts and favors.
At BlogActive such language implies that closeted GOP members who don’t toe the line in supporting the homosexual rights agenda deserve their outings.
Has a major US newspaper just employed that same justification for a story? It sure looks like it.
You can ask Smith here – Spokesman Review Ask The Editors Blog
Update: A Clear Voice looks at the charge that Jim West is a hypocrite.
-S-,
I’m sorry to see that you have such a serious case of thin skin. Perhaps you can go see a dermatologist while you’re out getting that dictionary.
I seriously hope that you’re don’t have any responsibilities where logic or judgment are prerequisites. Seeing the amount of time you send posting to WizBang, though, I doubt that’s much of a concern. If you want to have discussions where your beliefs will not be questioned, you might want to try the message board on the children’s magazine, “Highlights.”
Point 1 on this subject: I’m heterosexual, so I guess your conclusions about me being gay and what that implies are seriously off. If I was gay, I’d proclaim it proudly. I’m no Mayor West.
Secondly, I have no hate for Christ or Christians. I think that Christ was a great philosopher with a lot of good advice for living that is applicable to this day. I’ve read all of his teachings, and many of them I try to apply to my daily life, though only from a secular standpoint. I can certainly appreciate others that try do the same, from a religious standpoint. You however, seem determined to turn his words from great strength into bloody…what word am I searching for here? It starts with ‘h’ and has two ‘y’s in it. Oh well, I’m sure you can figure it out.
Finally, I’m glad to see that I can derail a thread with my ultra-powerful posts. Or perhaps it is the intellectual weakness of my opposition that grants me that power…
fatman,
Interesting story. I agree, this would be a great example of hypocrisy except for one major detail. The ACLU has fought and defeated several anti-cruising ordinances in several towns that had nothing to do with gays. Most of the ordinances were aimed at young hetrosexual men (especially minorities). Here are a few examples:
Salt Lake City, UT
Sioux Falls, SD
Milwaukee, WI
I’d also like more detail on the particular city and ordinance that you’re referring to and how exactly they determined that their problems were due specifically to gay men. Also, public lewd acts aren’t illegal where you live? No noise controls? Public urination isn’t illegal?? We have laws against all of those where I live. If these were the problem, why not pass time tested laws against that specific behavior and arest the people breaking those laws instead of making cruising illegal? That just doesn’t make sense.
sabre:
The city was Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, PA. The time was sometime in the mid-eighties (I think). I do distinctly remember that City Council CONSIDERED an anti-cruising ordinance, but I’m no longer 100% certain that they passed it; they may have caved in to pressure from the ACLU (and I should have said that).
Frankly, the anti-cruising ordinance was an attempt to solve the problem on the cheap (my opinion). The city was on a tight budget and didn’ t want to put on extra police patrols–through overtime or hiring more officers–or divert manpower from other, more pressing needs. And the Allegheny County jail was under federal mandate not to let jail population exceed 540 inmates, with a $1000 fine for every inmate released to meet that limit.
Yes, Pittsburgh does have noise ordinances, and ordinances against performing lewd acts and urinating in public. We even have open container laws out here in the boonies. Trying to find a cop to enforce them at 2:00 AM CAN be a little difficult, especially on a Saturday night.
As for how the residents knew that these were homosexuals, it might have something to do with the fact that some of them were caught engaging in lewd acts by the residents.
I should also add that the same homosexual activists who opposed the anti-cruising ordinance also opposed the city’s subsequent actions, though far less successfully. Don’t know if the ACLU was involved in that.
fatman,
Thanks for the explanation.
In any event, I think my point stands about opposition to the anti-cruising ordinance. The ACLU fights a lot of these, not just for gay men. There’s certainly no hypocrisy from their angle on that score. The gay rights activists weren’t seeking to make the illegal behavior you describe legal. They weren’t asking to be “allowed to do that which would get a straight censured or even arrested in a New York minute.” On the contrary, they were asking to do what was totally legal: drive around the block. Of course, they also opposed the “left turn” solution, because it criminalized the same behavior, just not as generally. However, they lost that fight, because this solution was not an overreach of power, like the cruising law was.
When cities take legal behavior that a certain group is engaged in and try to make it illegal, there’s generally a fight from the people engaging in that behavior to keep it legal. Why would you call that hypocrisy? In my town, we just enacted a smoking ban in bars. Non-smokers were generally in favor of the ban and smokers generally opposed it, but that seems perfectly logical, not hypocritical.
Sabre:
If I confused you (no insult intended) with the way my original post was worded, I apologize. I should have stated more clearly that the hypocrites, IMHO, were the activists, not the ACLU. I have issues with the ACLU, but that’s a debate for another day.
As for the notion that homosexuals were being singled out or treated differently, I don’t buy it. As I recall, the (proposed?) ordinance would have been used to prohibit cruising in other parts of the city as well. Not just by homosexuals and not just on that street. We do have our share of straight males who cruise certain neighborhoods looking for drugs or prostitutes or both. But I don’t recall a single straight male coming out (uh, sorry about that) in opposition to the ordinance. I also have issues with laws prohibiting those activities, but that’s REALLY a debate for another day.
As for your point that the homosexual activists weren’t trying to make illegal activity legal, maybe not. What they were trying to do is prevent the city from placing restrictions on their legal behavior that would have made it far more difficult to engage in their illegal behavior. And instead of a team of undercover detectives and decoys to arrest them, one uniformed cop with a ticket book or two would have sufficed. Now the city did manage to at least make it far more difficult to cruise that street with a couple of signs and a uniformed cop with a ticket book or two, but what about streets with high volumes of traffic where keeping traffic flowing in an orderly manner makes that unfeasible?
Finally, your analogy between a ban on cruising and a ban on smoking actually works against you. Your city is taking a legal activity like smoking and enacting a ban against it in certain places, just like my city tried to do with cruising. Even if you buy the premise (I don’t) that second-hand smoke is more of a threat to the well being of non-participants than cruising and the activities engaged in by the cruisers , that isn’t, or shouldn’t be an issue
The hypocrisy–and I believe that’s an accurate word– is that the homosexual activists in my city wanted to facilitate behaviors that are illegal for straights. In your city’s case, the hypocrisy would be if your city does not then devote their share of all revenues derived from federal, state and local–if any–taxes on sales of cigarettes, cigars, pipes and pipe tobacco to reimbursing bar owners for any revenue losses which might occur because of the ban. Which we both know isn’t going to happen.
I’ll try to take your points in order, but some overlap.
1) You say, “the (proposed?) ordinance would have been used to prohibit cruising in other parts of the city as well.” I think you mean “could”, not “would”. By passing the resolution in response to the complaints as they did (and especially placing the no-left-turn sign where they did, once that was overturned), the council made it pretty darn clear where the “cop with a ticket book’ was going to be once the ordinance was passed. It’s not that the law was selective. It’s that the enforcement was going to be selective and everyone knew it. That should also explain why it was mostly gay men protesting. Even so, I’d imagine there were at least some straight people who came out against it, solely based on ACLU action/notification on the cause.
2) When you place this restriction on legal behavior, it would make it more difficult to engage in some of the illegal behaviors (though, public urination? were they pissing out of their car windows?). True. However, it also makes it more difficult to engage in perfectly legal behaviors. All your posts make it seem like every last gay man in the area was guilty of continuously breaking the existing statues while cruising. If only a percentage of them did, then surely you recognize the right of the rest to protest this type of action and be free from any hypocrisy or bad intentions at all. They just want to keep on doing what they have been doing legally and above board — thus my smoking analogy.
3) Your main point is that “the homosexual activists in my city wanted to facilitate behaviors that are illegal for straights.” That should read “illegal for everyone” as you already pointed out. You’re just tarring every single cruiser with the actions of, at least potentially, a small percentage. For any gay man who just wanted to see and be seen in the hot and happening area while cruising around, you’re saying he can’t and then calling him a hypocrite when he objects.
4) On the other hand, let’s take the example of the gay man who isn’t responsible, loves to go down to the area, be drunk and disorderly, screw in a back alley, and then piss in a doorway. If he thinks that’s appropriate behavior for any man and woman in the city, that’s not hypocritical. It’s bizarre, but totally internally consistent. This gay man protesting the ordinance here would be more like Al Capone bribing police: he does it because it’s effective to allow his lawbreaking to continue. Hypocritical? No.
5) The dictionary definition of hypocrisy (from dictionary.com) is “The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess.” So, what belief do the people who protested the cruising ordinance have that they’re not being totally open and honest about?
I’ll try to take your points in order, as well.
1)You say that “enforcement was going to be selective and everyone knew it”. Actually, since the ordinance was never, to my knowledge, enforced, then there is no way to predict that. Now if the ordinance HAD been selectively enforced, then the ACLU and the activists would have had a point. As for straights coming out in open opposition to the ordinance, I’ll concede the possibility, particularly among ACLU members and supporters. I just don’t remember any.
2)It is possible to engage in illegal acts such as public drunkness, drunken driving, violation of noise ordinances by blowing your horn to get someone’s attention or stopping the car to engage in loud, boisterous conversations, obstructing traffic, sidewiping a parked car and leaving the scene or engaging in lewd acts without getting out of (or even stopping)the car. And I almost forgot littering. And to paraphrase your immortal words, it may even be possible to piss out a window, providing your willy is long enough.
3)The “hot and happening area”, as you put it, was and (I think) still is one block of a city street, with the rears of a bank and a large apartment building on one side and private homes on the other, with no restaurants within two blocks and no bars or nightclubs within a half-mile at least.The only thing that made this such a hot and happening place was that it was dimly lit.
4)I agree that your example does exhibit extremely bizarre behavior, but I didn’t call him a hypocrite; I called the activists hypocrites. They made a defacto attempt to legalize behavior by homosexuals that be would illegal for everyone ELSE, by opposing an ordinance that they would have ignored or even supported had it been aimed at straights. And if you can speculate as to motives of those who supported the ordinance, then I can speculate as to motives of those who opposed it.
5)See #4.
This will be my last post on this thread. Not because I think you’re right (you aren’t) or that you’re getting to me (you’re not). But there’s really nothing more to be said. You’re not going to change your mind and I’m not going to change mine. And I doubt if there are very many fence-sitters left reading this exchange.
Is there something wrong with your software?
The date at the top of the post says May 5, but this story broke today (May 9). We wouldn’t want the appearance of impropriety here, would we? (That’s the Royal We, of course.)
Oops. My mistake. I didn’t click through to the full story.
-S- wrote
“[The Spokane Review printed] that thay devoted ‘three years’ to their process and yet then go on to “expose” this guy’s use of computing.”
Typically wingnutty evasive understatement. This guy was using his computer to wheedle his way into the ass of a 17 year old which, to the best of my knowledge, translates to using his computer to commit statutory rape.
In and of itself, this isn’t particularly noteworthy. I think American age restrictions on sex are set a little too high and could be lowered to 16 (as is the norm in most European countries) without adverse effects, and there’s nothing wrong with solicting consenting partners over the internet.
However, what makes this incident so noteworthy was that this closet case was an opponent of gay rights. He was a “Do as I say, not as I do” hypocrite of the worst kind, using his legislative power to oppress people just like himself, such was his discomfort with his own identity. His disregard of age of consent laws strongly indicates that, had the restrictive laws he championed taken effect, he would have studiously ignored them.
Like a black klansman or a shitfaced prohibitionist, this guy was an utter, utter hypocrite. His hypocrisy makes him untrustworthy and undeserving of his position. It also makes him contemptable.
Still, wingnut hypocricy is de rigueur these days and, while it would once have been shocking, is now as banal as a ‘naughty’ Victorian postcard.
Absolutely.
It’s not TEH GAY that bothers me, it’s the hypocrisy. I don’t give a crap who he sleeps with, but he pretended to be something he wasn’t so he could oppress people who had enough balls to be who they are. It really rankles, and that’s the truth.
fatman,
1) Your initial characterization of the ordinance was that the residents complained and the city then took action. Cause and effect seems pretty clear cut here from your description. As I pointed out last time, that’s also where they put up the no left turn sign when the ordinance was overturned, so I think my case is pretty good, at least on a circumstantial level. The ordinance was never enforced, but the “no left turn” was installed and enforced, so it gives us a pretty good idea of how the other one would have gone. After the cruising ordinance, where else did no left turn signs spring up?
2) Thanks for expanding the list of illegal behaviors. True for all, as I noted in my last post. I was merely making a humorous aside about the public urination. Your list totally fails to address the main point of #2, though. It was that the cruising law also obstructed perfectly legal behavior that was all that a percentage (perhaps a large percentage) of the men were engaged in. That was the main point of #2 and #3, but you didn’t deal with this very relevant topic at all. All you do to address this is say that you’re free to speculate on their motives (see #4b).
3) So all this could’ve been avoided with better streetlights? There’s a lesson there, somewhere.
4a) “They made a defacto attempt to legalize behavior by homosexuals that be would illegal for everyone ELSE.” I think we’ve dealt with this before. Even with all your examples of behavior, there isn’t any of it that was or would have been legal for gay men and illegal for everyone else. And how can they possibly be making an “attempt” to “legalize” anything? They didn’t introduce any legislation. They merely fought against what others were introducing. You’re logic turns the whole thing on it’s head. The city was passing an ordinance and they reacted. The city ordinance was explicitly going to criminalize the legal behavior of cruising to make their job of enforcing illegal behavior easier. Your logic is like saying opposing gun control laws is attempting to make liquor store robberies legal.
4b) So your “pretty good example” of hypocrisy actually boils down to pure speculation on the activists motives? I’m certainly willing to end the discussion with that capitulation if you are.
Thanks for the open and honest exchange.
Cons are obsessed with sex. They have come to see such things as statues of justice and paintings as sexual objects. Perhaps they are just not getting enough because they think it is bad. In their sexual ignorance, they have come to conclude that gays are nothing but sexual objects. Like the person who said she doesn’t want children taught by gays, they view gays as people who do nothing but have sex, completely ignoring the fact that they are actual people who have actual jobs.
Something is only sexual if that is the way you view it. The “homosexual agenda” as cons call it is trying to get people to view gays as people rather than sexual objects. That is all. Like anything, it has its extremists. Unfortunately, cons are blinded by their ideology and are unwilling to try to understand anything that doesn’t fit neatly into their gated communities. And like I said, I think if they’d just start having more sex, they wouldn’t have to look upon such things as statues with lust in their eyes.