For all the alleged progress we’ve seen for us in the LGBT community, gay sex still has the power to separate people from money and good sense. While Hastert is wrong as hell for having sex with a teenage kid 40 some years ago it’s also wrong that the “victim” can handily made huge money over the threat of exposure. It would be helpful if the honest details were ever known. Maybe Hastert groomed the kid and victimized him completely. There is also the occasional minor who can spot an adults attraction and finds some value in that situation. No excuse for Hastert to mess with an underage kid but this is also an indictment of society’s homophobia. Just for the record I’m a progressive gay man who has been around long enough to not be surprised by much but still disgusted by a lot of things. Sometimes I just get sick of all of it.
Please don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean it like that at all, however it came off. The sore spot is that my government has been successfully intimidated by the Turkish government for most of the last century.
Dan Savage:
Let’s not even go there. Even if it were possible for a minor (of either sex) to provide consent in that situation it doesn’t match up with anything we know of the case so far. For starters at least one additional victim has come forward.
AP got there first:
Perhaps the insidious true reason why “family values” conservatives oppose birth-control and the legitimizing of same-sex unions is that they simply want to maximize the number of children conceived in the country as much as possible, so there is no shortage of young people for them to horrifically abuse.
yep that’s why I said it would be helpful if the full honest details were known and while under 18 in Illinois can’t legal give consent my years of work with sex offenders and victims have shown more than is ever gonna be comfortable to know. If there are others this should bring them out… The whole thing is disgusting from every angle including the press/media feeding frenzy. Being an organic gardener would have been a great career choice.
Ha, true. I stand corrected.
Fox News will have Krauthammer on complaining that the FBI is persecuting Hastert when he was the “victim” of an extortion plot. They will scrupulously avoid talking about what the extortion was covering up, even to the point of saying they won’t repeat the allegations of an extortionist. That will last about three days, and when they are finally forced to acknowledge what Hastert did, they’ll blame it on “a culture of permissiveness.”
Turns out the boogeymen at Fox News got it pretty much right, though they did bury his party affiliation somewhat. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/29/ex-speaker-hastert-reportedly-paying-to-conceal-sexual-misconduct/
Setting aside for the moment what uses Hastert may have made of the money, how many here on BB think that the federal government has a right to know why you are taking your own cash out of your own bank account??
Are you aware that this was put into place specifically to deal with illegal transactions involving drug dealers and other criminal activities which require large amounts of cash?
You are always within your rights to withdraw as much of your own cash as you wish. It’s simply a form that the bank is required to fill out daily.
Yes, I’m quite aware of that. And this is a clear use of a law being used by a publicity-seeking prosecutor for a purpose that has nothing to do with the law’s original intent. Just like the DMCA, and the Department of “Homeland Security”, et cetera.
Such laws need to go, and if Hastert had said “Fuck off”, when the feds asked him what he was doing with the cash, I’d contribute to his defense fund.
What part of “criminal activities” is not a function of this case?
He was doing exactly what the law is about: pulling out large amounts of cash for the express purpose of engaging in a crime.
This turned out pretty much as I expected. When it’s “scandal” + “boys wrestling coach”, there’s only a few ways it’s going to play out.
The larger story here will never be heard, probably: how is a former wrestling coach from rural Illinois with a few years in DC managing to pay nearly $2M under the table to one person? Where is he getting his money from, that he can afford that kind of outlay?
Guess!
From daneel’s link:
the widespread belief in conservative circles that Mr. Hastert’s tenure had been marred by big spending […]
Mr. Hastert “was a hands-off guy,” he said. “He was picked because he didn’t do anything” as speaker to control Mr. Bush’s spending.
The effort is already underway to rebrand him as a liberal.
Can you show me a statute to the effect that paying a blackmailer is a crime??
In addition to the highly-unethical-but-probably-legal fees he receives as a highly-paid lobbyist he’s been long suspected of taking large payouts under the table during his time in congress. The (alleged) deal to kill that Armenian Genocide resolution alone was estimated at half a million bucks.
