Portland mayor Sam Adams has decided to stay in office despite calls for his resignation after it was revealed that he lied about a relationship with an intern of a state representative. He began a platonic friendship(he claims) with the then seventeen year old intern which became a sexual relationship after the intern reached the age of consent.
What makes this unusual among political sex scandals, is that Mayor Adams is openly gay and the intern in question is the now 21 year old man who is awesomely named Beau Breedlove. I actually think that the fact that the possible victim is a male helps Adams because I don’t often think we generally view underage male teens as possible victims of sexual abuse.
Still, the call for his resignation continues. I believe that Adams should stay in office for his term unless the criminal investigation shows that Adams’ version of the story is not true and he had sexual relations with the man in question before he was 18. In reality, I don’t really think it makes a difference whether he had sex with the man while he was 17 or 18, but it does make a difference under the law. If Adams broke the law he should be punished appropriately.
The mayor would have been in his early 40s at the time of the alleged sex and should have known better, especially as was already an elected official at the time and had mayoral aspirations. An affair with a 14 year old female in the 1970’s ruined the previously stellar reputation of another Oregon politician, Neil Goldschmidt
Full disclosure, I voted for Adams for mayor, but not when he ran for city council.
Come on…who cares. The dude was 18, plus it’s none of our business who the guy sleeps with. I’m too busy caring how politicians vote, legislate etc. than worrying about that.
The way I read the wiki article, Adams was a city official, while the intern was working for a state rep. Is that correct? If so, then they weren’t in the same branch of government and it appears to me that Adams wouldn’t have had supervisory authority over the intern? If that’s the case, and as long as the intern was the age of consent, then it’s a personal relationship, and I wouldn’t care (if I lived in Oregon).
Who or what is calling for his resignation? Has there been an independent Gallup or Zogby poll? Or is it a corporate media bash rousing the populance for its own ends? Let’s not forget February sweeps are about to commence and every TV station has a vested interest in garnering as much viewership to increase ratings and ad revenue. Also, are the major media stations owned locally by people who may appreciate the diversity of Portland, or owned by outsiders who may not like gays?
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[li]Who stands to “win” if Adams resigns? Who stands to lose?[/li][li]Who stands to “win” if he doesn’t resign? Who stands to lose?[/li][/ul]
There’s a criminal investigation underway - that seems appropriate. We shouldn’t take anyone at their word here, especially since we know that the relationship began before the age of 18, whether sexual or not.
Because Henry Weinhard moved to Tacoma! Also, since it was only by pure chance, literally a coin toss, that Portland didn’t get named Boston the mayor’s monicker fits in an odd, Northwest sort of way.
Hey, far as I’m concerned as long as they weren’t boinking prior to Beau turning 18 I have zero problem with it (and only a miniscule amount of problem if he WAS 17) and don’t want him to resign. He’s an effective politician and manager, he did well on the City Council and I just don’t see this as an exploitative situation. Sam’s a very good looking guy and I bet he has young queer boys leaping out of the woodwork at him fairly regularly. A seventeen year old guy is NOT a blushing ingenue, nor is he a helpless victim and if he was even HALF as horny and determined as a lot of my younger gay friends were around that age it’d be more likely that Sam would be the actual victim! Oh look, there’s a tempest in this teapot…
I think you’re reading something into this that’s not there in the current situation. A variant of the accusation had come up during the campaign, and our local alt-weekly paper (hardly a bastion of big-business social conservatism) just broke the full details of the story about 2 weeks ago, which is what triggered the current crisis.
There have been a number of local opinion polls [ ETA: found a link to the poll ] that show Portlanders are sharply divided (or perhaps ambivalent is the better word) over this issue. It’s pretty much 50-50 over whether they think he should resign or not, although a larger portion of the poll group believes that he’s doing a good job.
Personally, I don’t think he should resign. He committed no crime, and the intern was not on his staff, so there’s no workplace sexual harassment issue.
I have trouble working up the enthusiasm to punish officials who lie to avoid personal embarrassment (rather than to cover up a crime).
I voted for him. I’m relatively new to the area, so I knew little about him previously. (I made my decision by reading various editorial board recommendations on the candidates and their experience.) I honestly didn’t even realize he was gay until he mentioned the gender of the intern in question during his press conference.
