There's a lil bit of a wrinkle to the story:The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party — who last month was elected president of the Young Republican National Federation — has resigned both posts, apparently in the wake of a criminal investigation.
On Tuesday afternoon, Glenn Murphy Jr. e-mailed media outlets a letter announcing his resignation from both positions, citing an unexpected business opportunity that would prohibit him from holding a partisan political office.
However, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department on Friday began investigating Murphy for alleged criminal deviate conduct — potentially a class B felony — after speaking with a 22-year-old man who claimed that on July 31, Murphy performed an unwanted sex act on him while the man slept in a relative’s Jeffersonville home.
In 1998, a 21-year-old male filed a similar report with Clarksville police claiming Murphy attempted to perform a sex act on him while he was sleeping. Charges were never filed in that case.Here's the police reports for both incidents - they're eerily similar.
Now the legal stuff: Glenn has not been arrested nor has he been charged with a crime. And like most any other American (at least until dubya erases that part of the Constitution) he's presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
But really, couldn't he just hire James Guckert and be done with it? Murphy's a Republican. Surely he can spare $200 for some quality oral sex.
10 comments:
I've been trying -- really trying -- to understand why this story is worth posting about, let alone reading about. This blog isn't based in Indiana. I personally couldn't tell you where Clark County, Indiana is located (although I seem to remember that the county which holds Indianapolis starts with an "M", so it isn't that one).
This guy may be just oh-so-barely approaching the "public figure" category, since he is the national president-elect-something or other of the Young Republicans. But as public figures go, that's pretty small beer. It ranks right up there with, say, some actor who played the opposing defense attorney on "Law and Order" on a semi-regular basis for one or two seasons back in the mid-1990s.
So this guy, what's-his-name,(allegedly) tried to give two guys knobbers in the past. What part of this qualifies as a "scandal" for you? The fact that he's gay? I guess you are just assuming that, since he's a [cue scary music] REPUBLICAN and everything, being gay is considered wrong or something. You're only allowed to be gay if you're a Democrat.
I'll grant that the consent angle is a bit fuzzy here. It ain't cool to go down on anybody -- male, female, same-sex, opposite-sex, anybody -- when they are passed out drunk and can't provide the necessary consent. But, since charges haven't been filed in either case, I would say that the consent element of this offense is still pretty far up in the air. Police reports tend to tell only one side of the story.
But to recap, you say that it somehow qualifies as a scandal when some Young Republican that none of us have ever heard of gives (homosexual) head several hundred miles away in some distant part of Indiana that most of couldn't find on a map. But when the President of the United States enganges in (heterosexual, but adulterous) oral sex right in Oval Office -- with a young intern whose ability to consent could also called into question -- that's not scandalous at all.
I'm not getting it.
Admiral;
First off there are some differences between your two examples. There are allegations of non-consent with our Young Indiana Republican. Were there ever allegations of non-consent a decade ago in the Oval office?
And who said that wasn't a scandal?
I always thought Clinton was a schmuck for engaging in (do I need to reiterate it?) consensual contact with a woman who wasn't his wife. No question about it.
And of course the scandal is not about the guy's orientation. Being gay is not scandalous. It's completely beside the point, in fact. To paraphrase Lillian Hellman, the forms of fucking do not require anyone's endorsement.
The scandal, such as it is, is the dissonance between the number of sex scandals in the GOP and how firmly it grasps onto the "family values" mantle.
How many boys did Congressman Foley want to diddle? How many marriages did Newt Gingrich have? How many abortions did Bob Barr pay for?
These are only scandals when you look at the general philosophy of their party and then compare it to their individual acts.
I always thought Clinton was a schmuck
Must you? Have a little respect for my feelings, huh?
It's completely beside the point, in fact.
Disagree. When it's one of those "stone them at the gates of the village" Wingnuts, it's very relevant for the same reasons you cite regarding the "family values" crap. Dishonesty. Hypocracy. And I'm sure there are other ee's.
Mr Shitrock;
Of course NO OFFENSE WAS INTENDED.
How's this?
I'd like to amend my previous comment to:
I always thought Clinton was a putz...
You make some fair points, David. But your post was not about (a) Tom Foley, (b) New Gingrich, (c) Bob Barr, or (d) anyone that any of us had ever heard of. It's about some poor bastard of a youngerst out there who's probably gay but was raised to think that being gay is something too awful to contemplate. Gingrich, Barr, and Foley are all for-real public figures.
More to the point, just being a Republican doesn't make him a solid lock for hypocrisy here. If you can find any kind of public record where the young man was slamming homosexuality and demanding that "God hates fags!", then fine, we can all point our fingers and laugh at the situation that he's put himself in. But not all Republicans are gay-bashers, anymore than all Democrats love Luke Ravenstahl.
People of all political shaps and sizes do stupid things when it comes to sex, especially when they are in their 20s and have been drinking. But you draw this particular instance out and post about it only for the sole reason that the kid involved is a Republican. But surely, there are young Democrats out there who have done things similarly stupid. And yet, strangely, neither you nor the press nor the national blogosphere have paid much attention to any such incidents.
Why not? Mostly because this particular incident fits into this stereotype you have of Republicans being sex-hating family-values types. And there certainly are those kinds of Republicans -- even a distrubingly large number of them -- out there. But you don't know anything about this particular guy.
All I'm saying is that you are painting any and all Republicans with a very broad brush, making a blanket assumption -- based soley on party affiliation -- that this guy publicly presents himself to be a "good" gay-bashing evangelical homophope Republican. Maybe he does. But his being Republican, or even the national president of some Republican youth organization, isn't enough to guarantee that. Making blanket assumptions about anybody based on only one fact is a silly thing to do. It makes no sense. Everyone is multi-faceted.
I always thought Clinton was a putz...
Me too. What's your point?
Just kidding!
you are painting any and all Republicans with a very broad brush, making a blanket assumption -- based soley on party affiliation...Making blanket assumptions about anybody based on only one fact is a silly thing to do. It makes no sense.
That's pretty much what goes on on the internets, Yer Admiralty. But when a person reaches an executive position in an organization -- particularly a political organization -- it's not a bit silly, nor unreasonable, nor unfair to ascribe the positions of that organization to that person.
If a person didn't WANT to be associated with homophobia and intolerance, why in the world would he or she seek such an office? Better by far to emulate that Lincoln-era Republican (when Republicans were the libs) and promise, "If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve."
i think it's worthwhile to post because i want people like this guy(hypocrite) stopped before the become a very public figure with the power to figuratively screw a lot of us.
maybe it will serve as an example to other little phonies out there with more ambitions than scruples.
Admiral;
Actually, my posting wasn't supposed to be referencing Tom Foley (who's a Democrat) but Mark Foley (who's not).
Of course you're right about everyone doing stupid things and that not every Republican is a zealot homophobe.
For the record my mother's a Republican and she's neither a religious zealot nor homophobic. She's a very sweet lady.
But the point, again, of my posting comes in placing the "family values" ideals of the GOP along side the behaviour of some of its members - including the young gentleman from Indiana.
Were the GOP not so strident on "traditional" marriage, morality (public and private) and so on, these unfortunate incidents would have nothing to be contrasted with.
That would be the meta-point of my blog posting.
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