The Ugly Truth-- Child Molesters

Today's NY Times poses an obvious question by Euripidean scholar Daniel Mendelsohn: "What if it had been a 10-year-old girl in the Penn State locker room that Friday night in 2002?" Before reading it, keep in mind that Coach Sandusky-- like most child predators-- was very much "straight," a seemingly "normal" married man with children. When I heard how Sandusky was using his charity as a lending library to get underage children into his clutches, it reminded me of extreme right-wing Republican leader Spokane Mayor Jim West, who did very much the same thing. West was a GOP heavyweight in Washington state, a loudmouthed Republican pol who, to a great extent, actually made his career based on his vicious homophobia... before being caught molesting young boys in a case that sounds entirely like Sandusky's. He made a big deal about getting married, proposing to his wife from the floor of the Washington state Senate. I wrote this in 2005, a year before he died:

Jim West is currently the Mayor of Spokane. But for 25 years West has used his positions of authority-- as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician-– to lure young boys into his web. It looks like West was one of the typical Republican closet cases who desperately tried to show the world how aggressively homophobic he was to try to prove he wasn't gay. West wasn't just another two-bit Republican pol; he was the Washington State Senate leader and one of the most powerful GOP leaders in the Northwest. So how homophobic was West (while he was molesting underage boys)? Early in 1986, West introduced a bill to bar gays and lesbians from working in schools, daycare centers and some state agencies. The bill called for firing state workers whose sexual identities became known. That same year he voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS during sex. Needless to say he vigorously opposed every gay rights bill that ever came up and, of course voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. In 2003, as Senate majority leader, he bottled up a gay rights bill in committee, where it died. Once he became Mayor of Spokane he opposed giving benefits to domestic partners of City Hall workers but was beaten with a veto-proof majority on the City Council. Jim West is a sick cookie, a sick Republican cookie.

Yesterday the FBI raided his home and confiscated his computer and other records as part of an on-going Federal Investigation into corruption allegations. West has been using his office to offer City Hall jobs to young men he met in gay online chat rooms. The FBI obtained the federal warrant to search West's home after convincing a federal judge there was probable cause to believe a federal crime had been committed. The warrant said there was sufficient evidence to believe that West "knowingly and willingly engaged in a scheme to entice others to engage in sexual activity with him through offers and grants of city of Spokane jobs, internships or appointments." West's secret life started unraveling in May when a local newspaper, the Spokesman-Review, started publishing the details of a thorough investigation into the Republican politician's double-life. His well-documented crimes against young boys go back into the 1970's when he was a deputy sheriff and a Boy Scout leader. West, who is clearly delusional, refuses to resign and is fighting a recall drive, does acknowledge using "poor judgment," but denies doing anything illegal. Nothing illegal? Does this sound legal to you? West and the members of the Pac NW Pedophile clan have been accused of using an at risk boys camp, Morning Star Boys Ranch, of which West is on the Board of Directors, as a kind of library to check out young boys for camping trips and hiking. It is alleged that during these trips the clan molested the young men. West, who resigned last week from the boys ranch Board of Directors, admits he "vaguely remembers" that he "maybe took one kid on a hike or camping trip once."

West, typical of the kind of cornered-rat-Republican on getting caught, is playing as if HE is the victim. After strenuously denying everything, he's now starting to crack and this horribly vicious, hate-filled homophobe who has used a career in public office to try to destroy the lives of innocent gay men and women, now tries to say he is being attacked because he is gay! "I'm being destroyed because I am a gay man, which is fine," this vicious right-wing child-molester/blowhard whined. Recently West lashed out against "sex Nazis" who try to regulate private sexual behavior, so deluded that he fails to recognize that he built his whole career on exactly that! "Because I am a gay man, because of this double life, it has been hell." My heart is not breaking for Jim West as more and more of his victims are coming forth to testify against his deprecations. By the time Bush and the Republicans are swept out of government we're going to have to build a new super-prison just to house the Republican politicians caught up in a culture of arrogant corruption and abuse of power beyond anything ever seen in this country before.

At the end of his life he was shunned by his Republican colleagues, as much because they thought he was "gay" as because he was raping defenseless children. The answer to Mendelsohn's question in today's Times reveals a similar "ugly truth," one, he points out, that goes "stubbornly undiscussed."

Whichever version of Mike McQueary’s story you choose to believe-- his grand jury testimony, in which a “distraught” Mr. McQueary, then a graduate assistant to the football team, “left immediately” after witnessing the former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky sodomize a young boy, or the e-mail recently leaked to the press, in which he wrote, “I did stop it, not physically ... but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room”-- the mind recoils at the grotesque failure to intervene more forcefully. How could a grown man have left the scene without taking the child with him? Mr. McQueary wants us to imagine that his brain was racing during those “30 to 45 seconds,” that he “had to make tough impacting quick decisions.” But it seems clear he wasn’t thinking at all-- and it’s hard not to wonder why.

I think it was the gender of the victim.

Does anyone believe that if a burly graduate student had walked in on a 58-year-old man raping a naked little girl in the shower, he would have left without calling the police and without trying to rescue the girl? But the victim in this case was a boy, and so Mr. McQueary left and called his dad (who didn’t seem to think that it was a matter for the police either).

Mr. McQueary’s reluctance to treat what he allegedly saw as a flagrant crime, his peculiar unwillingness to intervene “physically,” the narrative emphasis on his own trauma (“distraught”) rather than the boy’s, the impulse to keep matters secret rather than provide rescue, all suggest the presence of a particularly intense shame, one occasioned less by pedophilia than by something everyone involved apparently considered worse: homosexuality.

Mr. McQueary’s refusal to process the scene he described-- his coach having sex with another male-- was reflected in the reaction of the university itself, which can only be called denial. You see this in the squeamish treatment of the assaults as a series of inscrutable peccadilloes best discussed-- and indulged-- behind closed doors. (Penn State’s athletic director subsequently characterized Mr. Sandusky’s alleged act as “horsing around,” a term you suspect he would not have used to describe the rape of a 10-year-old girl.) Denial is there in the treatment of the victims as somehow untouchable, so fully tainted they couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be rescued. For Penn State officials, disgust at the perceived gay element seems to have outweighed the horror of the crimes themselves. (“Perceived,” because psychologists generally deny that pedophiles possess adult sexuality-- something that can be described as “gay” or “straight” in the first place.)

The denial is hardly surprising. In a culture that increasingly accepts gay life, organized athletics, from middle school to the professional leagues, is the last redoubt of unapologetic anti-gay sentiment. Anecdotal and public evidence for this is dismayingly overwhelming. Most recently, Sean Avery, of the New York Rangers hockey team, has been ostracized and ridiculed merely for making a short video in support of New York’s same-sex marriage act. (Anti-gay slurs are such an ingrained part of Ranger fans’ cheering that some gay fans have stopped attending games.)

What lurks behind so many male athletes’ vociferous antipathy to homosexuality seems to be deep anxiety about masculinity, the very quality that aggressive team sports showcase. After all, a guy is never so much a guy as when he’s playing a violent game or hanging with his teammates afterward in the showers and locker rooms, “horsing around.” The familiar ferocious anti-gay swagger many athletes affect is likely meant to quash even the faintest suspicion that anything tender or erotic animates naked playfulness between men.

But true masculinity, like true sportsmanship, contains other virtues, too: forthrightness, honesty, fair play, courage in difficult situations, readiness to acknowledge error, concern for the weak as well as admiration for the strong. In their handling of Mr. Sandusky, the leaders of Penn State’s legendary football program failed to display a single one of these qualities. Maybe it’s time for a new kind of sports hero. What else are we supposed to conclude when grown men, trained to brave 300-pound linemen, run away from boys in trouble?

UPDATE: Dale Kildee

Child sex abuse always seems to come from Republicans. But retiring Michigan Congressman Dale Kildee (D) has been accused by distant relatives of sexually abusing an underage male relative, a second cousin, over 50 years ago. He denies the allegations, and the drama promises to play out big-time this week. The charges against Kildee look insane and don't pass any smell tests.

QUOTE OF THE EVENING: GOP DETERMINED TO PROVE TO THE BASE THAT THERE ARE SOME NON-GAY REPUBLICANS IN OFFICE

Ken does an incredible job every morning, seven days a week, heading up the DWTQOTD Selection Committee, and making sure someone is watching every TV show and perusing the entire NY TIMES. 24/7! But the committee may have missed one of great interest to one and all. June 8th issue of THE ONION-- see while Ken and his Committee are up into the wee hours scouring the NY TIMES, I'm reading month-old issues of a less high-brow news source-- asked the crucial question: The US Senate voted yesterday on a proposed Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. What do you think?

The Onion's Quote Selection Committee, as you can see, picked three amusing quotes, but, for some no doubt Rove-inspired reason decided to censor the one really important answer. And that, my friends, is today's Down With Tyranny Early Evening Quote of The Day.

From Maya Coolidge, a tax preparer (amazingly, the identical twin of Ariel Kenner, the piano accompanist) comes this shrewd analysis:

With the midterm elections coming up, Republicans need to assure their conservative base that they're not totally gay.

Although some inside the GOP insist that the entire upper strata of the Party is run by closeted homosexuals, they could be at least partially wrong. Scott McClellen is gone. And let's not even get into speculation about Rove (no matter how many gay men swear they know for sure) or the even more obvious Ken Mehlman. Look instead at how the GOP has made an effort of at least making themselves look less gay.

Former Maryland Congressman (and Chairman of the Conservative Union) Bob Bauman was arrested with a teenage boy's appendage in his mouth and he was forced to give up his political career (as well as his wife and his 4 children). Kentucky GOP heavyweight Bobby Stumbo was banished from his leadership in the party after he was arrested for molesting a 5 year old boy. Virginia Republican Congressman, a viciously anti-gay "family values" psychopath, resigned after he was caught soliciting for gay sex online. Sam Walls, a GOP Chairman and candidate for the Texas legislature withdrew from politics after pictures of him as a drag queen started surfacing. After right-wing Supreme Court nominee G Harrold Carswell was arrested for fondling the genitals of a police officer in a Tallahassee rest room in a shopping mall, Republicans stopped nominating him to the Supreme Court and settled on Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito instead. After it surfaced that GOP homophobic closet case David Dreier was grossly over-paying his lover/Chief of "Staff," he was not permitted to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader. Similarly the Florida Republican Party decided it would rather lose a chance to win a Senate seat with one-step-from-the-loony-bin Katherine Harris than allow homophobic gay closet queen Mark Foley to move from his House seat (FL-16) to the Senate. Jim Kolbe, gay Arizona congressional homophobe, is retiring from Congress. Right-wing pressure forced Louisiana self-loathing gay blade Jim McCrery to marry his secretary before allowing him to rise in the Congressional hierarchy. After Clarkfield, Minnesota's ex-mayor Jeffrey Kyle Randall served 9 months in jail for sexually molesting 2 young boys (10 and 12 years old), he stopped running for office. And after Utah Republican state legislator Brent Parker, an upsatnding Republican father of 6, was arrested for offering a policeman $20 for a little sodomy he was forced to resign. Oh-- and Washington State conservative kingpin/Spokane mayor Jim West... what a mess!

It sure is a Gay Old Party!

THE GOP PROBLEM WITH CLOSET CASES: VIRULENTLY HOMOPHOBIC & DESPERATE POLITICIANS WHO MOLEST YOUNG BOYS

I would guess that the VAST majority of Americans of all religious and all political persuasions, and of all sexual orientations, are horrified, if not shocked, by the serial scandals in the Catholic Church of systematic molestation, followed by institutional coverup, of young boys by mentally ill predatory priests. These priests were severely repressed homosexuals driven to child molestation by institutions that demand that they never express their sexuality and that they look at themselves as cursed and afflicted. These predator priests have been victimized by a malevolent and primitive Roman Catholic Church obsessed with homosexuality. Similarly the Republican Party has been victimizing homosexuals in it's ranks. A stretch? Not at all. Homosexuality is so anathema within the ranks of today's GOP that gays within the party overwhelmingly hide their preferences and stay in the closet, often LEADING anti-gay crusades either to cover up their own repressed desires or through self-loathing. The ones who "come out," are either outed by someone else, like Congressmen Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) and Steve Gunderson (R-WI) or caught in the act of furtive sex like Congressmen Ed Schrock (R-VA) and Robert Bauman (R-MD). Most gay Republican politicians cower in the closet-- like David Dreier (R-CA), Mark Foley (R-FL), and Jim McCrery (R-LA)-- doing whatever they can to publicly deny their homosexuality. Most of them are not "normal homosexuals" who have healthy consensual relationships with other gay men but are the types caught with young boys in public toilets. And usually the louder and shriller the anti-gay rhetoric you hear, the more perverted the Republican yelling them. Look at Republican activist Steve Wilsey of Dobson's fascistic Focus on the Family. Wilsey was a Focus on the Family's youth counselor and a man who was considered a mentor to kids. He was convicted Dec. 19 of one count of "sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust." The judgment came after prosecutors charged Wilsey with molesting an 8-year-old boy--the son of another Focus On the Family employee--over a period of 16 months. GOP activist/anti-gay crusader "Reverend" Stephen White was arrested for soliciting sex from a teenage boy in a Philly suburb. Republican state representative Brent Parker was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer posing as a male prostitute. A couple of weeks ago Hawaii Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child. Remember G Harrold Carswell, the judge who Nixon tried to force onto the U.S. Supreme Court but who was defeated by Senate Democrats? He was arrested for making a pass at an undercover cop in a public men's room at a Tallahassee, Florida, shopping mall. Republican pols Howard Brooks (a 61-year old aide to California GOP Assembyman Phil Wyman) and Andrew Buhr of Missouri were recently charged with molesting 12 and 13 year old boys and Maine Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty last month to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.

One of these cases is now in the public eye. A GOP heavyweight in Washington state, a loud-mouthed Republican pol who to a great extent actually made his career based on his vicious homophobia, has been caught molesting young boys. Jim West is currently the Mayor of Spokane. But for 25 years West has used his positions of authority-- as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician – to lure young boys into his web. It looks like West was one of the typical Republican closet cases who desperately tried to show the world how aggressively homophobic he was to try to prove he wasn't gay. West wasn't just another two-bit Republican pol; he was the Washington State Senate leader and one of the most powerful GOP leaders in the Northwest. So how homophobic was West (while he was molesting underage boys)? Early in 1986, West introduced a bill to bar gays and lesbians from working in schools, daycare centers and some state agencies. The bill called for firing state workers whose sexual identities became known. That same year he voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS during sex. Needless to say he vigorously opposed every gay rights bill that ever came up and, of course voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. In 2003, as Senate majority leader, he bottled up a gay rights bill in committee, where it died. Once he became Mayor of Spokane he opposed giving benefits to domestic partners of City Hall workers but was beaten with a veto-proof majority on the City Council. Jim West is a sick cookie, a sick Republican cookie.

Yesterday the FBI raided his home and confiscated his computer and other records as part of an on-going Federal Investigation into corruption allegations. West has been using his office to offer City Hall jobs to young men he met in gay online chat rooms. The FBI obtained the federal warrant to search West's home after convincing a federal judge there was probable cause to believe a federal crime had been committed. The warrant said there was sufficient evidence to believe that West "knowingly and willingly engaged in a scheme to entice others to engage in sexual activity with him through offers and grants of city of Spokane jobs, internships or appointments." West's secret life started unraveling in May when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, started publishing the details of a thorough investigation into the Republican politician's double-life. His well-documented crimes against young boys go back into the 1970's when he was a deputy sheriff and a Boy Scout leader. West, who is clearly delusional, refuses to resign and is fighting a recall drive, does acknowledge using "poor judgment," but denies doing anything illegal. Nothing illegal? Does this sound legal to you? West and the members of the Pac NW Pedophile clan have been accused of using an at risk boys camp, Morning Star Boys Ranch, of which West is on the Board of Directors, as a kind of library to check out young boys for camping trips and hiking. It is alleged that during these trips the clan molested the young men. West, who resigned last week from the boys ranch Board of Directors, admits he "vaguely remembers" that he "maybe took one kid on a hike or camping trip once."

West, typical of the kind of cornered-rat-Republican on getting caught, is playing as if HE is the victim. After strenuously denying everything, he's now starting to crack and this horribly vicious, hate-filled homophobe who has used a career in public office to try to destroy the lives of innocent gay men and women, now tries to say he is being attacked because he is gay! "I'm being destroyed because I am a gay man, which is fine," this vicious right-wing child-molester/blowhard whined. Recently West lashed out against "sex Nazis" who try to regulate private sexual behavior, so deluded that he fails to recognize that he built his whole career on exactly that! "Because I am a gay man, because of this double life, it has been hell." My heart is not breaking for Jim West as more and more of his victims are coming forth to testify against his deprecations. By the time Bush and the Republicans are swept out of government we're going to have to build a new super-prison just to house the Republican politicians caught up in a culture of arrogant corruption and abuse of power beyond anything ever seen in this country before.

GOP HYPOCRITE/CHILD MOLESTER IN SPOKANE REFUSES TO RESIGN

To be a Republican in the George Bush GOP, one has to have moved quite far to the right-- not just far to the right of Lincoln, but far to the right of Eisenhower and even Goldwater! Where once the Republican Party stood primarily for Greed and Selfishness and used Yahoo-Nationalism to appeal to voters, today the Greed and Selfishness wing of the party takes a back seat to the religionist loons who are all about Hatred, Bigotry, Fear and that bad old American tradition of Know-Nothingness. Litmus tests for a Republican politician who wants to rise in the party ranks have to do with being against a woman's right to choice and against equality for gay men and women. The Greed and Selfishness wing is happy the religionist whackos are against environmental protections (which the Greed and Selfishness guys say hurt Big Business-- cleaning up after yourself costs money and lowers profits; and the religionist kooks are against anything that their crooked so-called "preachers" tell them will put off God coming for the Rapture), and against government regulations of unbridled corporatism. Anyway, in the state of Washington, one guy who has always embodied both wings of the new GOP was James West. As a state legislator and later the state Senate's Majority Leader-- a kind of junior Tom DeLay-- West has been a vicious, aggressive in-fighter for the most extreme Republican "values." He wasn't just a supporter of anti-gay legislation, for example, he actively, passionately pushed it. His extreme right-wing agenda didn't always resonate well in basically moderate Washington state but he had the support of voters in a backward Eastern part of the state. And, in 2003 West was elected mayor of Spokane.

Charges soon started swirling about the homophobic mayor being a child molester, someone who preyed on boy scouts. The Spokane Spokesman-Review did a long and careful investigation and was able to show that West was meeting underage boys on line and using the promise of city jobs to lure them into having sex with him. Usually when Republican pols get caught like this, they slink off into the night and are rarely heard from again. West, on the other hand, has claimed that he's into sex with men but denies he's a paedophile and refuses to resign. The City Council, overwhelmingly made up of conservatives like himself, has unanimously voted to ask for his resignation. Citizens are circulating recall petitions and even the right-wing shills at the Chamber of Commerce have gotten shaky in their support. A poll of Spokane residents shows over 60% of the people there think he should resign. The head of his party, George W. Bush, has no comment.