City of Seattle / The Stranger

Comments

1
Unbelievable. Drinks on Jack Connelly tonight. And I don't mean that in a celebratory way. At least we didn't abandon our popular mayor over something stupid like snow plows.
2
Fair or unfair, politics is a contact sport.
3
Well, The Stranger has hated Murray from Day One, so congratulations. But, as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for...
4
Thank you Mayor Murray.

You are, and never were, a pedophile, a chid rapist, and the horrible things your adversaries painted you. You did however, likely cross some boundaries when you paid for sex with some confused and vulnerable adolescent hustler boys under 18. I believe there's a huge distention. You're not into kids. You're a mature man in a healthy relationship with your husband.

Don't despair. Once you get out of these entanglements, you can still be a positive force for our city.
5
It's a shame the way in which Ed Murray's political career ended. It should've died long ago from a lack of heart and brains.
6
Thank you, Mayor Murray, for being an unstoppable advocate for LGBT rights and for your courage in speaking out against the current regime in the other Washington. I'm extremely grateful for your hard work.
7
I didn't particularly think you were a great mayor (or even that competent) but you are a major reason I can marry who I want to in this state.

You also should have had your day in court to face your accusers but if history is any indication the accusations will soon fade from memory and never lead to real charges.
8
Really sad to see so much anti-gay bullying at The Stranger.
9
Looking forward to the new Mayor who will be both greener and more to the left than Murray was.

You know that's true.
10
Not a huge fan of Murray but smear campaigns like this reap some pretty nasty shit down the road. I give you why we have President Trump and not President Clinton as the most recent example

11
@8: what the FUCK are you talking about.

12
If his accusers lose their case, can Murray turn around and sue them for libel/slander? It it goes that way, maybe in a couple years he can pull a McGinn...
13
... huge distinction... (@4)
14
His work on social rights issues was awesome but any drive down Rainier Ave will show his incompetence in regards to the homeless people in which his policies have made their lives worse not better. His whole handling of the accusations was deplorable. I welcome our new overlord Mayor McCheese or Mayor McBike.
16
@9
Looking forward to the new Mayor who will be both greener and more to the left than Murray was.
Mayor McGinn should look into funding a bicycle program.
17
@13: So if he diddled 16 year old boys, that's OK and he's not into young boys because 16 is the age of consent in Washington? If you say so... By the way, 18 is the age of consent in Portland, which is in Oregon.
18
Well there we have it. I wonder whom The Stranger will endorse next? Probably the person most likely to continue with the same Seattle politics of the past 20-30 years - the politics that have made our city more unaffordable, more exclusive, and yes, whiter than ever. Good work, Stranger! All those years of tireless advocacy have turned Seattle into... what you thought Bellevue was? Except that Bellevue actually has a larger percentage non-white population. Pat yourselves on the back and treat yourselves to a $6 latte and a $9 scone. You deserve it!
19
@18 The Stranger should probably get out of the business of political endorsements anyway. They've basically turned into a Seattle Met for the young people- glorified adversting. 10 Best Asian restaurants! Girls recap! Here's where you should be seen eating to be cool! The Stranger used to also have interesting and sometimes insightful articles but those are in short supply.
Charles is the last interesting article writer left now that Lindy and Bethany are gone.

Also good point about Bellevue. I was there recently and wow it is 10 times more diverse than Seattle, ethnicity wise.
20
@19 I understand your basic point but
>young people
>reading the Stranger

The people who actually read this rag are aging white boomers in Fremont and Phinney Ridge with a smattering of Gen Xers. I have never seen anyone under the age of 30 reading the Stranger. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
21
Great to see so many rape apologists read your paper!
22
@20:

You don't see them reading it because they read it online - print being so 20th Century. Hell, I'm technically a Boomer myself and I haven't picked up a print copy for at least 5 years - unless it was for wrapping glass wear when I moved a couple of years ago. Print is still great for that.
23
@11
Ask politely and I might explain
24
@22 The Stranger missed the boat by not absorbing the ethos of The Rocket when they went under. Yes, The Stranger is for old fags.
25
I'll have you know that I'm not an aging white boomer and I pick up a stack of "The Stranger" every week. They make GREAT fire starting material.
26
I'm curious about the results of that reader survey they posted here a month or so ago.

I've never been on Facebook or any other social media (barring a few disappointing months on Friendster), but from what I've gleaned that really is where most people get their "news." If your free time is spent posting and reading social media feeds, that's going to fill those increments to the wall, because that's a "continuous," rather than "discrete," activity. Hence, I doubt those (increasingly: most) people don't have much time left (or motivation to) head over to actual newspaper sites.
27
@17: I suggest you ask ping someone in the psychosocial youth development fields.
28
Interesting choice of a venue for the announcement.
30
@19 - if young people aren't reading this paper, what's with all this Kshama Sawant nonsense then? I figured it was for the idealistic youths!
31
Relieved.
32
Ed Murray spent almost twenty years as an elected legislator, representing Seattle in Olympia. Prior to that, he was campaign manager to another elected legislator, Cal Anderson, who represented the same district and was the first openly-gay elected official in Washington State history.

When Cal Anderson served in Olympia, there was no gay-rights bill and no possibility of one. The very idea of gay marriage could elicit a torrent of verbal abuse. Even the most radical of gay community activists on Capitol Hill knew such a bill would never pass, and certainly not by a popular vote.

After Anderson died in office, from complications due to AIDS, Murray followed his mentor into the legislature. It was a time of openly bigoted ballot measures in Colorado and Oregon, the former of which had passed and stripped all gay Coloradans of all rights, period. (It would later be overturned by our nation's Supreme Court, because everyone knew gay rights would never win at the ballot box.) Our own legislature went into special session, and one of the bills they passed was to ban gay marriage. (This was under the threat of placing it on the ballot if then-Gov. Gary Locke did not sign. Since anti-gay ballot measures had always been accompanied by terrorist attacks upon gays and defenders of gay rights, the anti-gay bigots in our legislature were effectively threatening violence against us citizens of Washington state if they did not get what they wanted. This blatant political blackmail worked.) These various ballot measures -- several of which were defeated by popular action here in Washington state -- would have branded gays as sexual predators, banned them from adopting any children (including their own!) and would have prevented any LGBTQ citizen of Washington state from ever having full civil rights.

Rep. Ed Murray worked, slowly and methodically, to change all that. He eventually got LGBTQ categories added to the civil-rights and anti-discrimination laws, and as a Senator, he got marriage equality passed, first by the legislature, and then by a popular vote. Election Night 2012 in Washington state was the first time gay marriage had been approved by a vote of citizens.

Cal Anderson would have been proud of his protege.

When one of the losers of those political battles, Jack Connelly of Tacoma, bankrolled a lawsuit branding Murray as a sexual predator and abuser of young men -- exactly the old slanders that Murray had himself worked so hard to defeat -- the choice was very clear. Believe thirty-year-old tales from the least reliable of accusers, brought by a viciously anti-gay bigot, or believe the longtime champion of human rights? Easy enough, and now we can go onto the election, and debate if Mayor Murray deserved re-election based on his actions since leaving our legislature.

But some habits die hard, and the old lie about gays and sexual predation never really went away. Even the local community of gays that Ed Murray had long served balked at rejecting the groundless allegations. And so the career of one of our longest-standing champions of human rights now ends, with we citizens of Seattle robbed even of our collective right to decide if we should use our sovereign power to end it or not.

Every person who called for Murray's pre-emptive resignation chose hate over reason, bigotry over rights, rumor and gossip over facts, a lynch-mob mentality over a legislature. The greatest service any of them could ever possibly do for our democracy is to burn their voter registration cards.

Even so, I hope none of them ever face groundless allegations of horrific predation, bankrolled by enemies and attributed to the least-reliable of sources. Every last one of them will have to quit their jobs, abandon their careers, if that happens, right?

And I would not wish that upon anyone.
33
So relieved.
34
If you are innocent you fight back. His claims of innocence are weak. He behaves like a whiny victim and wants to be a martyr. There are plenty of mindless liberals to take his place. He should resign.
35
@27
@17: I suggest you ask ping someone in the psychosocial youth development fields.That's a "non-response." I will take it that you think that it's just peachy keen for an adult male to have sex with a string of 16 year old boys.
36
@35: I have no control over your contorted logic so you're free to think whatever your trigger happy little brain tells you.
37
So Murray is out. The slate of other liberal candidates are either damaged (McGinn), won't pass the purity tests (Hasegawa), or just nuts (Oliver and Moon).

The left is vulnerable right now, right here in Seattle. Beware of an attractive person with business experience emerging who is cool with gay people but wants to bring "order" to our streets. It can happen here.
38
@22 - Print makes an excellent Milwall Brick.
40
Cliff Mass for Mayor! Check out his blog on how to fix homelessness

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/
41
@4 you say he's not a pedophile then go on to say it's OK to pay for sex with "confused boys under 18"

congrats, you're a pedophile too.
42
@37 purity test? is that code for shitty candidate who is anti-transit yet feels entitled to be the mayor of a city in dire need of transit?

fuck outta here with that neoliberal bullshit.
43
it's good he bailed. he would have lost anyway. say what you want about how you don't believe his accusers--(oh, you mean damaged people who have gone on to have criminal records? why, everyone KNOWS the only credible rape survivors are specimens of spotless perfection!)--there were plenty of folks who thought otherwise. enough to lose him the race.
44
@41: Looks like you overlooked the word "hustler". Please read comments before you respond to them.
45
@41: Let me spell it out for you. If the allegations are true, Murray rationalized or justified his tawdry assignations with these adolescent hustlers because of the prostitution. Discuss the morals on that all you want, but I fail to understand this obsession of lumping the Mayor in as if he was priest abusing an altar boy.
46
Thank you for proving my point so nicely, nrutas dear.

Do you really think that, if elected to Mayor of Seattle, he would still be "anti-transit"? He may well still be against they way they are determining the car tabs, and I'm here to tell you, that may put him in office. Reforming that - even if he can't really do anything about it as mayor - will be a much more popular position than the idea of eliminating the police department.
47
@44 So, you're OK with having sex with under age teen age boys as long as they are "hustlers"?
48
Four boys can't be wrong about remembering the mole on the community member's community member.
49
Arty dear, strictly speaking, you're talking about hebephiles, not pedophiles. I just learned that term the other day.
50
@10 Dearest Vel-DuRay, that's interesting. Had to look that one up. In all honesty, I don't have much of a problem with two sexually active indeviduals enjoying "what God gave them", biologically, as they say, "when there's grass on the field, it's time to play ball." But Hizzhonor is simply not being honest, and in being dishonest is doing what all liberal cheeses like him abhore (or is it abWHORE?), the so-called "victim blaiming". Murray should step up an say "Hell yeah I boinked cute teen boys, you should try it!"
51
@42 Car tab fees based on realistic value is "neoliberal"? We have problems in Seattle, and that has a lot to do with neoliberal policy directions - that Murray was into up to his reptilian blue eyes - but I would have never guessed the term would come up here.
52
@50: Or really? So why didn't you just say so instead of insinuating that anyone who has a liberal/reasonable attitude on consent laws is a pedophile?
53
"So why didn't you just say so instead of insinuating that anyone who has a liberal/reasonable attitude on consent laws is a pedophile?"

Because, our sweet innocent little Raindrop dear, Arty understands what you do not. Jack Connelly did not send his minions trolling the prisons and god-only-knows where else because it was fun or entertaining. He did it to find desperate men, with nothing to lose, who would agree to sign onto his lawsuit attacking Murray, in return for some future promised payout. And Connelly did that so he could destroy Murray's career by branding Murray with the nastiest negative stereotype of the gay man: that of a soulless sexual predator.

We know Arty understands this because he has been filling the comment threads of the Murray smear posts here with endless variations of that negative stereotype. He has obsessively slobbered variants of "cute", "young", and "boys" to describe the supposed earlier versions of the sad, washed-up, middle-aged men who now consort with Connelly to accuse Murray of having abused them when they were adolescents. He has taken as gospel truth stories with no substance of any kind and riffed loudly on them, attacking Murray endlessly as a pedophile rapist.

Arty understands what he's doing. And given that he just lied to you, claiming not to be the raging, hateful bigot that he loudly and proudly is, he's pretty confident you don't understand.
54
#44: Nobody is condoning what Murray did, Arty. The reaction you're getting is because you sound suspiciously as though you aren't letting this go at being Murray's acts and no one else's. It sound a hell of a lot as though you never let go of the "gays are pedophiles" thing and see this as a chance to drag that back out of the cesspool of your consciousness.

This is on Ed Murray and ONLY Ed Murray. It's not on anyone else.

Oh and "Old f__s"? Really? Really?
55
Its not ok to take advantage of desperate teenage hustlers, street people and other vulnerable people. Smarmy comments show a total lack of sensitivity to this.

I don’t know what happened and if Murray is guilty or not. I do know that his treatment of unsheltered people in this city is abominable. He has sent the police in to force them out of their campsites brutally, denied them any garbage removal services etc., thrown away their belongings, and forced them into the streets with no where to go. He is as cruel and insensitive person and I do not give a damn if he is gay or not. I am. He has made this city a paradise for the rich and could give a damn for the rest of the people.
56
#55 obviously it's not ok to take sexual advantage of teenagers-of ANY gender. The specific gender of the victim should not matter.

57
"I don’t know what happened and if Murray is guilty or not."

Of the drunks in Pioneer Square who took me up on my offer of a future payout in a lawsuit against you, all were willing to say you sacrifice goats to Cthulu. However, only some of those drunks were willing to say you sodomized the goats before sacrificing them, so I don't know what happened, or if you're guilty of sodomy or not.

I do know, however, that homeless encampments are filthy, dangerous, and have no place in any long-term solution to homelessness, so I'm glad Mayor Murray rid our city of them.

"I do not give a damn if he is gay or not."

What an amazingly courageous and progressive view for you to hold here in Seattle, in this day and age. (In related news, 1983 called, asking for you to please return the big hair and leg warmers.)
58
woah....of course it is not ok to take sexual advantage of teenagers of any gender how did I disagree?

Taking away a person’s shelter when that is their only option and not offering a decent alternative is despicable any way you want to play it. And that is what mayor Murray is doing. HE IS CAUSING MORE HOMELESSNESS. So you don’t like the encampments? Fine but people are not being offered decent options. They are being thrown out with nowhere to go. People without homes deserve a life and deserve self determination. Of course the encampments are not a long term solution. All it takes is job loss, mental illness, caught up in addiction with little options and people become homeless. Some people have jobs and go to school but they cannot afford the thousands of dollars it costs here to rent an apartment or even a room. Only if you are well off you deserve to have a decent place? If you care about people without homes check out the Stop the Sweeps web site and sign the petition. Murray (using the police) is throwing people out in the streets and taking away what little they have. That could be called a move towards genocide. People die without shelter. The status quo is not working for most people. 1939 called and asked you to wake up and smell the coffee - tensor.
59
That could be called a move towards genocide. [...] 1939 called...

Thanks for admitting defeat, via the well-known corollary to Godwin's Law. That saves me any further trouble here. (Also, thanks for admitting how much being nailed as a fake liberal bothers you. Homosexuals like Murray were one group targeted in that actual genocide, you ignorant and insensitive fool.)

Since you are still unclear on this point, I'll do you the favor of informing you: the issue was never Murray's homeless policy, tax policy, rainbow-crosswalk policy, or anything else of actual substance. The issue was whether we here in Seattle allow smears, promulgated by persons who are not citizens of Seattle, to dictate our political choices. You're all for it and I'm completely against it, and the smear merchants won this round, with your enthusiastic help. Please let us know when your self-righteous indignation subsides to the point where you can see how smear politics is never a valid way to choose leaders or make policy.

Oh, and won't you please think of the kids, and stop sodomizing the goats before you sacrifice them? :-)
60
#58: The reason I raised gender as an issue there was that you used the term "hustlers", which has an exclusively male connotation as far as I know. And also because (this isn't your fault, but it's there) there have been a lot of posters in this thread that have pretty much said "see, this proves we're RIGHT to hate gays", which is not a thought that should be part of this conversation at all. The issue is sexual predation and nothing else.
61
Agreed about Murray betraying the homeless, btw.

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