"A particularly vicious kind of hypocrisy": How do gay politicians like Spokane, Wash., mayor James West justify their vocal support for antigay policies--even after they've left the closet?

"I'm being destroyed because I am a gay man." In an era when preachers and politicians regularly demonize gays and lesbians in an effort to rally their supporters and consolidate their power, this is not a surprising complaint. But when the complaint comes from one of those politicians who has built his career in part on blocking all legal paths to equality, it's more than surprising; it's stupefying.

The gay man speaking was James West, the embattled anti-gay Republican mayor of Spokane, Wash., whose cruising of gay chat rooms--allegedly luring young gay men with promises of gifts and city jobs--was revealed in a sting by The [Spokane] Spokesman-Review. West was talking to the newspaper's editor, Steven A. Smith, shortly after the story broke. It was an odd, tear-filled early Sunday morning telephone call, later detailed in the paper.

"I'm being destroyed because I am a gay man, which is fine," he told Smith. "I've been in public life; I can accept that. Because I am a gay man, because of this double life, it has been hell." Later in the same phone call, West contradicted himself. "Yes, I know it's not about being gay, I know that," he said. "There are other things."

There are indeed other things. There are the swirling accusations of sexual abuse of two boys in the late '70s, a period when West was a sheriffs deputy and Boy Scout leader. (West denies the accusations, and the statute of limitations for molestation charges has expired.) There are questions about whether West abused the power of his office to procure sexual favors. (The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating.)

But most of all, there is the hypocrisy. This reluctantly self-described "gay man"--West has said he does engage in consensual sex with other adult men--spent his 20-plus-year political career building a virulently antigay record. As a Washington State representative in 1986 he sought to bar gays and lesbians from working at schools and day care centers. He also voted to stifle AIDS education efforts and to fire openly gay state employees. In 1998 he adamantly supported a so-called defense of marriage act, which passed and enshrined marriage discrimination in state law. In 2003, as state senate majority leader, he effectively acted to stall a gay rights bill in committee.

As mayor he sought to deny equal benefits to the domestic partners of city workers. And all this time, apparently, West was leading his double life--gay man at home (despite a five-year marriage to a woman that ended in 1995), antigay politician at the office. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich observed, "This is more than hypocrisy-it's pathology."

"There is something psychologically off with people who attack other people who share their identity," Rich tells The Advocate. "It is hypocrisy that goes beyond normal hypocrisy. It's a particularly vicious kind of hypocrisy."

West is not an anomaly. He is simply the latest example of a privately gay man who has dedicated his public life to bolstering antigay causes and antigay public figures. In fact, he's at least the third example just this year. Republican political consultant Arthur Finkelstein--an obsessively private man whose Massachusetts marriage to his partner of 40 years was revealed in April--was a longtime adviser to former North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, perhaps the most notoriously hateful antigay U.S. senator in recent history. Then there's faux journalist Jeff Gannon, the Republican partisan who spent more than a year posing Bush-friendly questions in the White House press room while Web sites advertising his services as a gay escort were still attracting potential clients. The 2004 election, in which the Bush campaign used homophobia to increase right-wing voter turnout, didn't seem to change Gannon's mind one bit.

Then there are the less publicized examples, such as Steve Kreseski, chief of staff to Republican Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich, who in May vetoed a bill that would have allowed the state's gays and lesbians to register for the right to make medical decisions for their domestic partners. Ehrlich reportedly said that the measure "will open the door to undermine the sanctity of traditional marriage."

"Why does Ehrlich have an openly gay chief of staff if Ehrlich claims to support the family values agenda? If gays threaten that agenda, then how can he have a gay as chief of staff?" activist John Aravosis wrote on his Americablog Web site. "Both Ehrlich and Kreseski have some answering to do." (Governor Ehrlich's office did not return a phone call from The Advocate seeking comment.)

Other Republicans who have been widely reported to live openly gay lives in their off-hours while dedicating their political lives to limiting GLBT rights include a Bush favorite, congressman David Dreier of California, and another U.S. representative, Mark Foley of Florida, who is a Senate wannabe. Dreier, who shares a home with his male chief of staff, refuses to comment on his sexuality; Foley went so far as to call a press conference to demand that the media stop asking about his.

But hypocrisy is not limited to the GOP. When New Jersey governor James McGreevey, a Democrat, resigned last August, famously saying, "I am a gay American," activists in the state quickly pointed out that the governor was a steadfast opponent of marriage equality.

So is all this apparent hypocrisy simply shameless political expediency, or is this really, as Rich put it, pathology? Can gay men really believe that the world will be a better place if people like them are cheated out of equality? Perhaps former president Bill Clinton formulated this question most succinctly when he commented on Finkelstein's nuptials. "I was sort of sad when I read it," Clinton told reporters. "I thought, one of two things. Either this guy believes his party is not serious, and is totally Machiavellian in his position, or there's some sort of self-loathing."

But psychologist Rhonda Linde says that throwing around terms like "self-loathing" and "pathology" is too easy when it comes to closeted people and their seemingly hypocritical actions. Internalized homophobia "makes people feel terribly bad about themselves and can lead someone to do things that are very self-destructive, but it's not the only factor," says Linde, coordinator of mental health training and research at Boston's Fenway Community Health. "You have to put it in context of the other issues in a person's life. A person may decide not to come out for many reasons, everything from a fear of losing one's job to a fear of being beaten up."

In political terms, then, Linde's analysis suggests a hypocrisy born out of self-interest: The politician's priority is the protection and advancement of his career above all else. The suffering he may cause his fellow gays and lesbians simply doesn't register--or, more ominously, he may resent the freedoms enjoyed by gays who live openly when he is convinced he can't. At that point, the hypocrisy of the closet begins to look a lot like revenge.

Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans, sees the issue as one of a generational shift. Older gays, such as West (who's 55) and Finkelstein (who's 59), grew up in a time when being gay came with much more shame than it does today. "Thankfully, today there is a growing number of gay conservatives, and progressives for that matter, who can be open and honest," Guerriero says.

One such example is gay Republican Mike Gin, 42, the mayor-elect of Redondo Beach, Calif., who won a landslide victory in May despite an antigay campaign on the part of his opponent and a Republican activist group [see box]. "Being gay wasn't even an issue for me or others during my eight years on the city council," Gin tells The Advocate. "It's just part of who I am. I have to be gay and I have to be a Republican."

Gin says he doesn't see West's problems as "a gay Republican issue. It's an individual's issue."

Gin and Guerriero agree that if West is guilty of misconduct, he should resign. The Spokane city council voted unanimously on May 31 to ask for his resignation but does not have the power to remove him. West, who can be recalled only by a special election that results from a petition drive--one is under way--was sitting tight at press time.

Rich says he feels some sympathy for the mayor but adds, "It would be easier to feel bad for him if he made amends and didn't continue to propagate public policies against people like himself. All people are capable of reforming, but I have no sympathy for West if he doesn't lift a finger for change."

Kuhr is editor at large of Boston-based GLBT newspaper In Newsweekly.