Shakes here...
"Former Spokane Mayor James E. West, who opposed gay-rights bills but was recalled from office over an Internet gay sex scandal, died Saturday of complications from recent cancer surgery. He was 55."
I feel really sad about this. I had no love for Jim West, who abused his various positions of authority, including his mayorship, to facilitate sexual relationships with young men, while simultaneously serving to further an anti-gay Republican platform, like assailing domestic partnership benefits for Spokane City employees. He was the worst kind of conservative hypocrite, who maligned and marginalized the LGBT community while living a double life.
But even this hard old heart, resistant as it is to any sympathy for his political scandal, is not unmoved upon his death.
