Feb 20, 2009  |  By: Robert A. Bernstein  | COMMENTS     

IN A RECENT editorial, Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff argued that the first openly gay mayor of a major American city, Portland’s Sam Adams, should ignore demands that he resign for lying about a sexual affair. Naff sees the brouhaha as “just another example of hypocritical, holier-than-thou partisans trying to use sex to bring down a gay public official.”

As it turns out, Naff’s view is shared wholeheartedly by roughly half of Portland’s gay community but opposed with equal passion by the other half. Adams’ opponents, including the editor of the city’s gay paper, Just Out, feel that his continuation as mayor is bad not only for their beloved city as a whole, but for the gay community in particular.

After talking with members of Portland’s gay community, I’m inclined to take issue with my good friend and editor. 

For one thing, then-City Councilman Adams did far more than simply lie about his affair with a teenage intern. He formulated a full-scale publicity onslaught against the mayoral campaign opponent who first raised the issue — another gay man — calling him a gay basher who was stirring up the image of gay men as predators of young boys. He actively recruited his young boyfriend as a co-conspirator in the cover-up. He somewhat haughtily argued that he was simply “mentoring” his young friend to cope with anti-gay cultural attitudes. He called the Just Out staff into his City Hall office and self-righteously derided the “lies” about his moral character. 

So his response would seem to be something more than just “a lie about sex” — rather, more of a substantive and willful undertaking knowingly based on pure fiction.

AND NOW, HIS refusal to resign has ignited something approaching full-scale warfare that threatens to tear the gay community apart. The passion is reflected, for example, in the destruction of newsstand copies of Just Out after its editor argued for resignation, and in pro-Adams demonstrators carrying signs pleading for “forgiveness” and “love.” But others feel strongly, as a gay reader wrote the Portland Oregonian, that Adams needs to go because he “abused the trust of all Portlanders and set back the cause of equality for gay and lesbian people.”

One disturbed community leader, who supported Adams when the sex story first broke during the campaign, told me he now feels that healing the community breach will be very difficult so long as Adams stays in office. Passions are so high, he said, that his earlier support for Adams “has come back to bite me in the ass.”

JUST OUT EDITOR Mary Davis has written, “Disagreement continues to ferment. I wake up in the night shouting, ‘It’s not about sex!’”

And, sadly, in a city where public anti-gay slurs were once rare to non-existent, many now feel free to vent their hate as a result of what is becoming known as “Tailgate.” Residents say homophobic comments, unlike in the past, are now being heard in everyday talk in restaurants and on the streets. Riders in a car passing City Hall were seen pumping their arms out the windows and screaming, “Perverts.” That’s not the Portland the gay community has come to know and love.

And the nationwide publicity about the Adams affair almost certainly will damage Portland’s well-earned image as an open and welcoming city. One observation now making the rounds, for example, is that “Portland is the only city where you can get Sam Adams if you’re under 21.”

To halt the jokes and anti-gay slurs, to begin the task of restoring Portland’s open and welcoming image, and to end the warfare within the gay community, Adams should step down.