I wrote this a few years ago, but I put it in my SkyDrive and let it sit. I think that this issue is still culturally relevant, so I’m publishing it, anyway
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My partner, Dana, and I have been discussing what happened between Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove. Unfortunately, we don’t have the same take on things… which has led to a bit of friction as we try to talk about it. Her point, and she does have one, is that because Beau Breedlove was 17 years old when it happened, he can’t be completely innocent in all of this. I think that he’s responsible in only the way a 17 year old can be responsible, which is, to me, not very much. The average 17 year old balks at having to take out the trash. They don’t have enough life experience to know that doing a few chores is infinitely easier than the maintenance and upkeep of the whole house. The gift that comes with age is being able to look at the whole picture. Life experiences add, then multiply, with each year. How are we to expect that Beau Breedlove and Sam Adams could even be compared? To me, saying that Beau Breedlove wasn’t innocent, and was truly capable seeing what he was doing is only raising or lowering them both to the same standards.
Even if this were an extraordinary 17 year old, are we really to take his actions into account? For those who are brilliant beyond their chronological ages, there is no evidence that they are more socially adept than those of their “regular” peers. Because there are so many people interested in dating older (and by that, I mean all sexual orientations), it’s not so strange that Adams would be the object of his interest… even lust. Lust makes people do crazy things, especially teenagers, because again, they haven’t been alive long enough to see major consequences play out long-term.
Sam Adams had long passed the threshold that stands between adolescence and adulthood. It’s called a “threshold” because we don’t become adults all at once. In fact, most of us kind of stumble towards it, and hope the rest of adulthood is better than what we’ve seen so far. Breedlove was in that place- trying on the clothes of adulthood, and like most teenagers, finding them just right in some places, and too loose in others.
In terms of their stations in life, the clothing of adulthood for Breedlove was closer to The Men’s Wearhouse, while Sam Adams was sitting comfortably in Brooks Brothers… and perhaps a Louis Vuitton “murse” just for panache.
This controversy has nothing to do with whether Beau Breedlove and Sam Adams had sex before Breedlove turned 18. Although statutory rape is illegal (even when both parties consent), it happens all too frequently- even those running for high office. The real issue is an ethical one. Do 17 year olds have the presence of mind to fully understand the consequences of a relationship with a much older person? Does the older person have the presence of mind to fully realize what they might do to this young person’s life? Age gap relationships are notorious for generational quirks that are hard for people out of the public spotlight. On top of that, Breedlove has been subjected to an unreal amount of media attention- something that has made him infamous.
Sam Adams must have had the forethought that if anyone found out about the relationship he had with Breedlove, they both would have been skewered by media and public opinion polls. Is it fair to go into a relationship with a younger man (and a minor when the relationship began), knowing what you know? Especially the part about how it’s going to be seen as illegal? Does there have to be actual penetration for Sam Adams to have done the wrong thing? The man dated a child, setting a date for sex arbitrarily for two weeks after his 18th birthday.
The problem is not a large age-gap relationship- people of all ages date for all kinds of reasons. The common thread among those relationships (the healthy ones, anyway) is that when they met and started dating, they were both fully comfortable with their adulthood… established in that identity before the relationship started. How is that possible if Beau Breedlove was still enmeshed in the world of high school? It is unfathomable to me that an adult would be comfortable in a relationship where their lives have been and will continue to be so different.
Alternatively, how would Beau Breedlove get along in the world of high-profile politics? Could he be taken seriously as the Mayor’s partner? Perhaps I am reading way too much into this, but none of Adams’ or Breedlove’s interviews point to one night stands. It was ongoing, to the point of Adams attending Breedlove’s birthday party at his parents’ house. Whether or not Breedlove’s parents were aware of the situation is irrelevant. The point is that the affair was ongoing. Sam Adams treated Beau Breedlove like an equal, much to his detriment.
Children are protected by statutory rape laws for a reason. They may have the technical ability to blaze new pathways into the future for our entire society… but at the same time, does that replace human experience? Does that take into account the incubation period that needs to happen before an adult can say that he or she is capable of running his/her life smoothly? Does a quick mind replace the hard-earned lessons that life dishes out? The kind of relationship that Adams was cultivating with Breedlove is tantamount to stealing his ability to grow and mature at his own rate, instead of adulthood backing him into a corner.
Being 17 is all about learning to navigate the troubled waters of relationships, without the added pressure of having a boyfriend who’s already been thrown in without a life jacket. There’s no way to muddle through together.
With this particular relationship, there’s also no way to deal with that frustration privately. Breedlove and Adams will be analyzed in excruciating detail- something for which Adams hasn’t publicly acknowledged. We the people have the right to hold our leaders to certain standards. Not breaking the law is (should be?) one of them. However, we have also ripped a now 21 year old’s life to pieces, intentionally, because our drive to know more is overshadowed by the part where Breedlove’s privacy has been slashed to non-existent and he gets to wonder where the hell his old life went.
…and that’s the part where Breedlove will have to take responsibility. The affair is over, he is now past the point of any shelter from the law (unless the statute of limitation hasn’t run out), and soon the next big news story will make him less of a target for media attention.
That’s why what Sam Adams did is under investigation. If Adams had an affair with someone of his own age, they might already have the resources (emotionally, financially, etc.) to rebuild. And while I can’t accuse Adams of intentionally trying to hurt Breedlove, I hold him accountable for feeling urges toward a minor without suppressing them. Adams told Breedlove the first time they kissed that they shouldn’t be kissing. Sam had already reached adulthood, been through lovers and breakups and whatever else. How could he not know that he was changing this boy’s life?
Relationships between adults and children are supposed to be about enculturation, which the dictionary defines as the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquires values and behaviors that are appropriate and/or necessary in that culture.
Though Sam Adams may or may not have slept with a minor, and may or may not be prosecuted for that crime, the mere fact that he was willing to overlook this boy’s station in life and treat him as an equal hasn’t yet been positive or life-affirming. Treating him as an equal was a way to justify having romantic and sexual contact. Now that the story has broken, being treated like an equal to the Mayor has turned into him into Nabokov’s Lolita, planning and manipulating himself into Adams’ finely woven, yet completely unwilling, pants.
Which spin doctor came up with that brilliant plan? What journalist or press secretary was adamant that the only way to release this to the press was to vilify the person who wasn’t legally capable of making the decision to date a 42 year old man? It’s sickening to think that somewhere out there, a committee gathered to discuss what to do, and this is the best they could come up with.
Let’s turn our focus away from the Mayor for a second, and broaden into the cultural war waiting to happen.
This sex scandal upholds every value that fuels the backlash against gay marriage and other civil rights… a story that will be held up for years to come regarding why gays and lesbians cannot be trusted with children. Even though there are plenty of straight men out there that regularly patrol high schools for 16 year olds that look as if they could be 25, those cases rarely splash across the TV at 11:00. Though conservative Democrats are just as likely to be afraid of granting gay marriage and adoption, the Republican right-wing machine has clearly cornered the market.
In an article written for Mother Jones about former Congressman Mark Foley, author Cameron Scott had this to say:
Foley apparently includes being gay among the “wrongs” that the fifth step of Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program requires him to admit. Foley, however, has yet to admit “the exact nature of [his] wrongs” against the teenagers who worked for him. Even more troublesome is the former Congressman’s conflation of pedophilia with homosexuality.
This stereotype is so widespread that even relatively tolerant people don’t address its absurdity. But, says psychologist James M. Cantor, at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, there is no scientific evidence linking gay identity and pedophilia. That bears repeating: there is no evidence that gay men are more likely to be attracted to or to molest underage boys (emphasis mine). Cantor suggests that the Christian right’s consistent depictions of “homosexuals” as pedophiles—the same stand the Family Research Council is currently taking—relies on “mere sophistry.” To generate these claims, right-wing researchers simply refer to a man who has molested boys as homosexual.
Because he’s the Mayor of Portland, Sam Adams will be that one guy inflated to represent millions of gay men. You know why they can get away with it? First, that Sam Adams developed a relationship with a minor is actually a fact; Second, there are more people in America that read headlines than all the way to the bottom of an article… so even if the article has a disclaimer, it is doubtful that the masses will see it, much less remember it in their talking points.This leads to questions that have vague answers at best:
- Has the GLBT community in Oregon suffered as a result of Adams’ misconduct?
- If so, how much time will it take to erase that damage?
- How do these problems in the Portland GLBT community affect the way all heterosexually challenged Americans are treated?
- What are the steps needed to ensure progress in erasing the image that gay and pedophile are inextricably interrelated?
- By the local GLBT community in Portland?
- By the people of the nation?
- By state legislation and arbitration by the state’s Supreme Court?
- By national legislation and arbitration by the Supreme Court?
As a political science student whose favorite, yet most difficult class has been Constitutional Law, I’m not in a position to discuss precedent in depth. Skimming the surface, however, it seems as if there is plenty in the Constitution to guarantee equal rights to the GLBT community- equal protection, right to privacy, freedom from religion, and that’s just the big three. There have been countless suits brought in lower courts that would also uphold same-sex marriage… not because there is precedent for marriage itself, but because the cases refer to federal rights that would have been granted automatically by marriage to begin with.
Marriage cannot and should not be defined as one man and one woman by the state, because it is not based on any sort of statute- only religious or cultural beliefs. As a result, it’s incumbent on the federal government to allow same-sex couples to marry… if for nothing but the fact that marriage is a civil contract that carries monetary, medical, and right-to-survivorship benefits.
So if marriage is a civil contract, why doesn’t the GLBT community have access to them?
In so many ways, homophobia has become kinder, less obvious. But the flip side of the coin is that sometimes, the GLBT community isn’t doing much to help itself. In years past, I have always had a great time, both watching pride parades and walking in them. The flip side is that the pride parade always includes those floats (and people, you know what I’m talking about), that force everyone to participate in a small group’s sexual fantasies. Those floats are even more obvious when the media shows up, because they always seem to miss the floats with PFLAG, Open and Affirming churches, COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), and the ever-increasing supply of mainline companies that commit serious money to having parades in the first place. The longer we keep putting sexualized images into the public arena, the longer people will think that being gay is only about sex… because true to form, the media will never cover something such as mundane as the children’s coloring tent at the back of the pride festival if there are men wearing only micro-shorts in the front.
That brings us back around to Sam Adams, and what he really did wrong. In addition to putting a minor/young adult through a horrible situation, he’s managed to cover up all the things that the GLBT community is doing right. If Sam Adams is correct that sex never happened before Beau Breedlove turned 18, then of course, he hasn’t done anything illegal. It remains to be seen, however, if not committing a crime also releases him from responsibility.
Stories That Are All True 