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Mayor James E. West of Spokane, a Republican opponent of gay rights, was accused in a newspaper on Thursday of molesting two boys decades ago and the paper also says it caught him using the trappings of his office to try to court a young man online.
Mr. West denied the accusations, but acknowledged he "had relations with adult men."
He admitted offering autographed sports memorabilia and a possible City Hall internship to what he thought was an 18-year-old man on the Web site Gay.com. The man was actually a computer expert hired by the newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, as part of a sting operation.
Mr. West, 54, a former Boy Scout leader and Army paratrooper who was married for five years in the 1990's, denied that the online offers constituted abuse of his office, and he said he would serve out the more than three years remaining in his term. [...]
Mr. West, a conservative, rose to become majority leader of the State Senate during a two-decade legislative career. He consistently opposed efforts to expand civil rights protections for gay men and lesbians and voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, a ban on same-sex marriage, in 1998.
The newspaper had hired a computer expert to create a fictitious identity as an 18-year-old boy to chat with Mr. West, whose online aliases included "RightBi-Guy."
Mr. West would not characterize himself as gay. As for the reason for his online visits to Gay.com, he said, "curiosity, confused, whatever, I don't know."
- ASSOCIATED PRESS, "The Mayor of Spokane Is Accused of Molesting," new york times May 5, 2005
posted May 06, 2005 in politics, print. 20022001