Let’s remember when Spokane State Sen. Jim West introduced a controversial “AIDS education” law, on this day in 1990 (January 18)
SPOKANE, WA — DECEMBER 2: Spokane Mayor James E. West listens during a breakfast meeting of the Southside Republican Action Club December 2, 2005 in Spokane, Washington. West is facing a special recall election in Spokane over a recall charge alleging he used his elected office for personal benefit, authoring a letter over the Internet, intending to help obtain a student internship with the City of Spokane for a person he believed to be an 18-year-old high school student. In a signed campaign ad from today in the local newspaper, West writes, ‘Let me say again: the charges are false. I have never used my office for personal gain or committed illegal acts.’ Recall ballots will be counted on December 6th. (Photo by Jeff T. Green/Getty Images)
Spokane politician James West had a, well, interesting legacy he left behind when he died in 2006. He was a social conservative, and a massive hypocrite. When he was mayor of Spokane, in 2005, he was recalled from office for his own scandal, but we’ll get to that shortly.
One of the defining traits of his political career is an intense focus on laws that were meant to regulate sex, and he had a remarkably anti-gay history in the legislature, including sponsoring a law that would make it illegal for gay people to work in daycare centers and schools, and would define being gay as “deviant sexual behavior” and allow people to discriminate as much as they want. In 1990, he introduced a bill that would make all sexual contact between people under 18 a crime. It was mocked wildly, including in the pages of National Lampoon. As HistoryLink tells it:
On January 18, 1990, State Senator Jim West of Spokane proposes an AIDS education measure that includes a provision making all sexual contact illegal for anybody unmarried under 18. West says he looks at it not as a law to be enforced, but as a convenient “excuse” for abstaining teens to “use if they don’t want to do it.” It is quickly branded the “No-Sex-For-Teens Bill” on the front page of The Seattle Times. It is widely derided as criminalizing “a perfectly normal human interaction.” The Seattle Times runs a mocking editorial headlined, “Get a Life, Sen. West! — Lightweight Thinking on Heavy Petting.” A political columnist for The Spokesman-Review will note one obvious problem with the law. “Aren’t they going to have to round up all the unwed pregnant teenagers and throw them in jail? Won’t their delicate condition be automatic proof that they’ve broken the teen sex law?”
Sex was a common thread in a number of bills that West had backed in his 21-year state legislative career. Early in 1984, he introduced a bill to toughen child pornography laws, making possession of pictures of children for pornographic purposes a felony. The bill never got a hearing. Then in January 1986, West co-sponsored a bill, along with 13 other Republicans, which would have barred homosexuals from working in schools, day care centers, and some state agencies. The bill defined same-gender sex as “deviant sexual behavior,” along with bestiality, and declared that a person with an “orientation towards deviant sexual behavior has no right to be free from discrimination.”. The bill, which went nowhere, was a reaction to Governor Booth Gardner’s executive order banning discrimination in state hiring based on sexual orientation.
West was serving as mayor of Spokane when his political career began to unravel. The Spokesman Review conducted an investigation that he abused young boys as a scout leader in the 1970’s. That wasn’t fully corroborated, but another investigation found that he was, as mayor, meeting young men online and promising them internships with the city in exchange for the same “deviant sexual behavior” he spent much of his political career railing (heh) against.
He refused to resign as mayor, even after a unanimous City Council vote urging him to do so. He was recalled by Spokane voters at the end of 2005. By 2006, he was dead.
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