Gay Portland Mayor Hanging In There

In a winning landslide, Sam Adams on January 4 became the first openly gay mayor of a major US city. But just two weeks later, his promise threatened to unravel when news of his 2005 relationship with Beau Breedlovee, a teenage legislative intern Adams met while serving as a city commissioner, once again became front page news. In 2007, Adams had insisted the relationship between the two was a “mentoring” bond.

But under prodding from Willamette Week, Breedlove, now 21, last month suggested there was more to the relationship than that. In Washington, one day before the Inauguration, Adams acknowledged that he began a romantic relationship with Breedlove when the younger man was 17, but insisted they did not have sex until he turned 18.

Oregon Attorney General John Kroger is now probing the matter, and the new mayor pledged to fight for his job. See Gay Portland Mayor Hanging In There
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-portland-…

Police Charged with False Arrests of Gay Men at Adult Video Stores

Anger is building against the police department in the wake of an increase in arrests of gay men for prostitution at Manhattan adult video stores. Last week, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn joined in the outcry. She said she is working with the mayor’s office and commanders of the police department to set up a meeting that will include gay community groups “to get to the bottom of this.”

The arrests have been documented by Duncan Osborne of the Gay City News over the last several months. Police are allegedly using handsome young undercover cops to cruise middle-aged gay men, offering to go home with them for consensual sex. As they leave the store together, the cop offers to pay the man for the sex, confusing the victims who can’t imagine why the younger man would make such a proposal. Then, as they walk out of the store, the victim, despite never having agreed to any exchange of money, is surrounded by undercover cops, handcuffed and charged with prostitution.

Gay activists and civil libertarians see the arrests as part of a continuing effort to shut down porn operations in the city and a tendency by the police department to criminalize gay sexual behavior.

We need to see [the arrest policy] stopped and to figure out how it started,” Quinn told Gotham Gazette, calling the arrests of gay men “the most egregious I have heard of” going back to her days as executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, which is part of a coalition to stop these arrests. “It’s not even entrapment,” she said. “These are false arrests.”

See Police Charged with False Arrests of Gay Men at Adult Video Stores
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