Openly gay Portland Mayor Sam Adams is on the ropes, and will probably resign, because he lied to a reporter about sex.
Yes, he was stupid to lie – as Clinton was – but the question never should have been asked in the first place. Sex is a bodily function, we all do it in myriad different ways, and it’s time to stop treating it as the equivalent of corruption or bribery or lying about weapons of mass destruction.
Bill Clinton was an asshole for trading the collective will of the voters who elected him for a blowjob; the idiocy there was that he did it during his term of office, in the White House, while he was married. He knew the stakes and his unbelievable emotional immaturity overrode everything else. Yes, he lied about it and that got him into legal trouble because of the vast right wing conspiracy determined to take him down, but it was the monumental and multifaceted selfishness of the act that made him into an object of ridicule.
Sam Adams was not married at the time of the relationship in question, and he was not mayor. He was not getting blowjobs under his desk while on the phone with members of the Portland City Council. The relationship was a private one and the gossiping quisling who brought the story to the reporter’s attention should have been ignored. Adams never should have been put in the position of answering a question that had nothing whatsoever to do with his fitness to serve as Mayor.
Even the question of the young man’s age is a non-issue, not only because he was an adult when the relationship became sexual, but because it’s ridiculous for the age of consent in any state to be 18. Oregon’s age of consent makes criminals out of half the high school seniors in the state.
We are biologically programmed to seek out sex beginning at the onset of puberty; from there it is a matter of individual growth and maturity (and, frankly, opportunity). To arbitrarily place the entryway into the world of legal sexuality at 18 is either willfully ignorant or deliberately obtuse. I was 20 when I lost my virginity, and was far more naive and unprepared at that point than my husband was when he lost his virginity at 16. Setting the legal age for consensual sex at 18 reflects the same kind of cookie cutter stupidity that drives the supporters of abstinence only education, in the face of mountains of evidence of its spectacular failure.
Back to the issue of sex and politics: they are inextricable, because politicians are human and humans are going to have sex.
But are we really so immature that we can’t leave the tittering about naughty bits bumping together separate from our consideration of political qualifications and fitness for office? Let consenting adults have their fun in whatever way that works for them, so long as they don’t do it in the street and tie up traffic.
From what I understand, the original line of questioning *was* about illegal activity – two of Adams’ staffers were concerned about his friendship with a 17-year-old. When questioned about the 17-year-old, Adams said he did not have sex with that person, period, without offering qualifiers regarding age. (Right? If I have my facts wrong on this, please set me straight.)
I know it is not entirely fair, but I kind of look at it like the felony-murder rule: if you are doing something you don’t want others to know about, and it comes up naturally in the course of fair questions being asked about potential illegal activity, then it is fair game.
In that sense, this very much parallels the Clinton scandal. They were not investigating Lewinsky issues at first, but a legit investigation about something else led there. Bad luck, but it’s the chance you take when you do something that you’re not proud of.