The Official Verdict of the Skull/Bones Blog:
I do not believe it would be a Great Travesty of Justice if Mayor Sam Adams were forced to Resign.  I do not believe it would be a Great Travesty of Justice if Mayor Sam Adams were to retain his seat.  While this sounds as though it is a weasley statement, and one that would annoy a mass of people who view any defense of Sam Adams as a reckless loosening of Moral Fibers  — I firmly and strongly cling to this conviction.

Shockingly, this bit of reporting from The Oregonian adds nothing to deter this conviction, and I’m actually a bit puzzled by the immediate hammering that this answers some lingering doubt about anything, but nonetheless the comments come forth:  “That answers everything!  Clean out your desk, Sam!” — suggesting that if it was reported that Adams had hacked out a hairball the call would come forth in the comments “There it is!  Clean out your desk, Sam!”, the reportage being irrelevant.  (Interestingly enough, “Silverfox” has it wrong here regarding Senator Craig.)

Now, that being said, let’s see what the Letters to the Editor to the Oregonian for yesterday have to say — Letters to the Editor being, of course, the 20th Century version to a Blog.  Yesterday is good because it’s a small sampling, least read newsday and a few days for the story to have had a lull, before the Sunday edition hit with the next attempt to dredge up some interest.

Elaine Bauer:  I think that had Adams been straight — and his affair had been with an 18-year-old woman — it would hold no interest, prurient or otherwise. Male-female consensual sex is not newsworthy.   Yep.  Never heard of purient interest with a 40-something old politician and a woman half his age.

Gilion Dumas:  Sam Adams used his position and age — and the glamour that came with them — to seduce a teenager. Whether or not Adams waited until Beau Breedlove turned 18 to have sex with him, the relationship he nurtured when the young man was 17 is what gave him the opportunity and authority to seal the deal.
The glamour that comes with the position of City Council member.  No more Glamourous a job than that, eh?
Strangely enough, in my eyes if not the Eyes of the Law, it would for the reason cited by Gilion Dumas if Adams had not waited for the 18th birthday.  Of course if I were Breedlove and I were okay with having had sex on the wrong side of 18, I would just lie — which the commenters to today’s Oregonian article seem to be conjecturing.  We’re a little weird in the realm of Adolescence and early adulthood, though 18 is as good as any a designation for “Age of Majority”, I will subscribe to the “horse-shoes” rule here — that age being arbitrary enough.  The Criminal Justice System/Industry books young teenagers for Crime with “If you do the Adult Crime, you do the Adult Time”, and while that’s not going to be a license to have sex with someone the youngest age of someone who was convicted with an Adult Charge, it is a defacto permission from the Law for me to make a morally fudge judgement about the Age of Majority — though, not too much younger than Beau.

Moving forward here, the editor of the Willamette Week I heard describe the situation in terms that a 17/18 year old would never find the Mayor attractive, “a pudgy 40-something year old” was his words.  Here, I think he’s missing the judgement of the just down-sized “Gay Columnist”, who will inform you that Sam Adams is, indeed, “Hot”.

Joe Kitterman:  This is not about being gay or what goes on in one’s bedroom. This is about lying. Sam Adams concocted a falsehood to willfully and intentionally mislead us. He lied to you, he lied to me, he lied to his long-term partner and convinced Beau Breedlove to lie to us all as well.
This is a weird statement.  Bluntly put, I’m the opposite:  I have no problem with the lying, but I do have some trouble with the sex. 

Jeff Kerr:  The relevant questions are:
Is Sam Adams a devoted public servant who holds the best interests of the community and the world at heart? Is he strong enough to learn from his mistakes and become wiser because of them?
These are the questions Adams should be asking himself as he ponders his political future. We don’t need a perfect mayor, we need a human being.
At the end of the day we’re trying to untangle the question — Would Sam Adams go all Mark Foley on us?  I suppose Gilion Dumas, “in his line of work”, already has the answer to that question, but bully for him.  In some comments in one of the news items posted by one of the papers, I saw a fairly ludicrous statement on how Beau’s life has swerved off course after being damaged by the affair with Adams, based on some preposition along the lines that he has — here in the early 20s– has (horror of horros) had a string of retail jobs, his promising life obviously destroyed.  I see these attempts at Reaching.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.