Witchhunt in Spokane

June 2005

The mayor of Spokane, Washington, Jim West has not been a champion of gay civil rights. He has opposed extending anti-discrimination protection to gay people, threatened to veto domestic-partners benefits for gay households, and sponsored legislation to ban gay people from working in schools and daycare centers.

Thus, some may be tempted to take pleasure in the trouble Mayor West now finds himself.

A local Washington paper has created a political firestorm with its series of reports detailing Mayor West’s alleged pursuit of teenage male paramours. Lurid headlines paint West as a child rapist prowling the Internet to seduce vulnerable youth. Though facing no legal charges, the salacious innuendo has led to demands for West’s resignation.

But a sober look at the facts leads any rational person to be alarmed at what’s happening to West. The tactics used to “expose” the mayor, the immediate presumption of guilt, the decades-old murky accusations of “abuse,” the transgressions of due process, and the plain facts of the case argue that West is the victim of a witchhunt.

The Spokesman-Review newspaper collaborated with an 18-year-old man who reported having a date with the mayor. (How or why the young man got in touch with the paper is unclear.) Though both participants in the date were legal-age, consenting adults, the paper set out to entrap West. Reporters posed as an on-line screen personality called “Moto-Brock.” Though the reporters/creators initially stated his age as 18, “Moto-Brock” later changed his age to 17. Evidently, the newspaper thought the younger age would make for a better smear, even though Washington State’s age of consent is 16.

Transcripts of West’s cyber-chats printed by the newspaper reveal that he and “Moto-Brock” discussed a wide range of issues, that West offered advice and help for getting into college and obtaining a job (with no sexual quid pro quo), that the plans they made to meet were to hit golf balls at a local driving range. The newspaper could report on no crime committed nor contemplated, but– like Linda Tripp and Ken Starr– they knew the political damage that can be done by dragging someone’s private sexual life onto the front-page.

After this faux “scandal” was reported, two more “accusers” came forward. One had to read deep into the stories to realize that one “victim” alleged a friend of West’s abused him sometime in the 1970s, only accusing West after the current scandal broke. The other “victim” reports that West merely asked him out on a date which he declined.

Mayor West may be guilty of hypocrisy, but the truly damaging lapses in ethics belong to the media and West’s accusers.

For a newspaper to deliberately entrap someone with lies and fantasies is reprehensible. To print stories designed to mislead and inflame is journalistically unethical. And to target anyone, even those closeted, for political destruction because of their homosexuality is bigoted.

As dreadful as the press has been in this case, our own National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has been utterly despicable. NGLTF has demanded West step down, citing his “predatory and appalling behavior…. Based on what we know about pedophiles, it’s almost certain there are more [victims].”

In one short statement, NGLTF abandons the presumption of innocence. They prove themselves willing to try people in the ever-hysterical press. They endorse guilt by association. They imply that legal-age teens need to be protected from homosexuality. And they sanction the dangerous notion that perfectly legal sex, or pursuit thereof, can be used to take out disagreeable politicians.

Our real worries are not with Mr. West’s apparent hypocrisy, but with “our” Washington lobbyists who call for sexual witchhunts and countenance abrogation of civil liberties.

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