Forgive and Forget?

Sam Adams, the first openly gay mayor of Portland, Oregon– not the beer– was caught having had a sexual relationship with a minor in 2005, which he vehemently denied when it surfaced during his mayoral race, nearly ruining an opponent’s political career in the process.  He finally confessed having lied about the relationship several weeks ago, and has been embroiled in a scandal about which Portlanders are certainly not too happy being nationally (and perhaps, internationally) relevant.

Portland is divided on this issue since it broke a day after our new president was sworn in.  On the one hand, there are those who are willing to stand by the new mayor and his political ideals.  Sure he messed up; everybody does.  They believe that people shouldn’t forget the things for which they’d voted Adams in to uphold.  But there are also those who wonder what other things he may have lied (or will lie) about and how that would affect how the city is managed.  They worry that forgiveness is too big a gamble.

There is a billboard visible as one heads westbound on the Hawthorne Bridge coming from Grand Avenue.  It simply reads ‘FORGIVE’ and is quite clear for what it was intended.  Surely, Portland’s healthy liberal population want to do just that.  After all, a good majority of them may have been responsible for Adams’s election.  But not all of them may feel that way.

Adams has decided not to resign his post as mayor in spite of being publicly demanded to do so by such local major publications like The Oregonian and Just Out Magazine (a GLBT-geared publication), and instead wants to regain Portland’s trust.

Opposers of Adams’s argue that the city’s approach would have been different if this situation had been between a 42-year old heterosexual male and a 17-year-old female, where societal misgivings would’ve been more clearly defined.  Would the city still be divided in its reaction then?  Would supporters still be so easy to put up billboard signs that state between the lines that ‘ye who has no sin cast the first stone’?

Or is this all just part of the political make-up?  We’ve had to survive too many of them in the past.  What’s another?  It certainly won’t be the last.  Should we just move on?