RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
When Portland, Oregon, welcomed Sam Adams into office this month, it became the largest U.S. city to have an openly gay man as mayor. But already a sex scandal is muddying his short record. April Baer of Oregon Public Broadcasting reports.
APRIL BAER: Sam Adams was supposed to spend Tuesday at Barack Obama's inauguration. Instead, Portland's first openly gay Mayor got to face down an army of TV cameras.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mayor SAM ADAMS (Democrat, Portland, Oregon): I want to apologize to the people of Portland for my dishonesty and for embarrassing them.
BAER: During Adams' mayoral run, rumors started churning about an alleged sexual relationship in the candidate's past with a young man called Beau Breedlove.
Mayor ADAMS: The allegation coming at me was sex with a minor.
BAER: Adams says that was not true, but he wasn't telling the whole story.
Mayor ADAMS: I should have told the truth at the time and taken the consequences then.
BAER: That truth, Adams says, is that sex did happen, but it didn't happen until a few weeks after Breedlove's 18th birthday, the age of consent in Oregon. Still, Adams says he didn't think anybody would believe him, so he lied and asked Breedlove to do the same. The revelations have been a body blow to a city that prides itself on it thriving gay community. Portlanders were proud of Adams and proud that his personal life hadn't been much of a campaign issue. But pride has turned to angry outrage, spilling over onto blogs, talk radio and even some Sam Adams strongholds, including here at this gay community center.
(Soundbite of people talking)
BAER: Tuesday morning, gay men, lesbians, transgendered people and others gathered on couches and folding chairs to watch the inauguration.
(Soundbite of song "The Star-Spangled Banner")
Unidentified Chorus: (Singing) O, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
BAER: Sam Adams helped to found this place. To these people, he was part of a rising tide of social justice.
Ms. KIMBERLEY VAN PATTON: Here we are standing on the mountaintop, looking over and we've got our black president and our gay mayor, and we were going to get this done, you know? And now I just feel like we've totally been let down.
BAER: Portlander Kimberley Van Patton(ph) says the scandal is more than a setback.
Ms. VAN PATTON: We spend our whole lives trying to convince everyone that we're OK, that we're not broken or wrong. And I don't care who he slept with, but he lied.
BAER: In another corner of the room, Ryan Shultz(ph) was mindful of how 45-year-old Adams initially dismissed the story as a nasty smear, the worst kind an older gay man could face, Shultz says, a smear suggesting he was trying to recruit younger men into a gay lifestyle.
Mr. RYAN SHULTZ: He was trying to break it down, that stereotype, but in fact he's building it up by lying about it.
BAER: The chorus of reprimands for Adams isn't quite citywide. Bryan Boyd is a blogger for site Gay Rights Watch, who's followed Adams political career.
Mr. BRYAN BOYD (Blogger, Gay Rights Watch): Things like this happen in a straight city all the time. Humans have sex, consensual sex, and that's that. I think Portland needs to get over that. And you know, Sam does need to regain our trust in a lot of ways, because he did lie.
BAER: But Boyd thinks Adams still has things to offer as mayor and that resignation is the wrong move. The city's police union, its major daily paper, and even the local gay newspaper disagree; all three are calling for Adams to step down. In some ways, the city's reaction has been colored by ghosts of the past. In 2004, former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt was revealed to have sexually abused a 14-year-old girl over a period of years. While Adams' circumstances are very different, Portlanders are looking at this current scandal with a deep weariness. The Oregon attorney general's office is investigating. For NPR News, I'm April Baer in Portland, Oregon.
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