Never fear! Top Man is here!

[kydoty]

http://www.wday.com/news/north-dakota/3732576-fargo-lawmaker-sent-explicit-photo-claims-disclosure-was-payback-vote-gay

 

A North Dakota lawmaker who sent an explicit photo of himself to another man says the exchange being made public is retaliation for a recent vote against expanding gay rights.

Rep. Randy Boehning, a 52-year-old Republican legislator from Fargo, says a Capitol employee told him a fellow lawmaker vowed to out him as gay if he continued to vote against bills granting gays legal protections against discrimination.

 

Boehning refused to identify at this point who he believes is behind the purported political payback for his vote against Senate Bill 2279, the third such bill defeated in the past six years by North Dakota legislators.

 

The exchange came to light when Dustin Smith, a 21-year-old Bismarck man with no known connections to the Capitol, contacted The Forum earlier this month, saying he recognized Boehning from a gay dating smartphone app called Grindr. Chatting under the user name Top Man!, Boehning sent Smith sexually suggestive messages and, in the early morning hours of March 12, an unsolicited photo of his penis, according to exchanges reviewed by The Forum.

 

"How can you discriminate against the person you're trying to pick up?" Smith said in a recent interview.
When first questioned about the messages two weeks ago, Boehning declined to comment on whether he sent the explicit photo and messages.

 

But on Saturday he confirmed he was Top Man! and said he doesn't think sending a graphic photo of himself to a stranger is a lapse in judgment, as Grindr is an adult site where users often exchange such images.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Outing someone as gay is a pretty horrendous thing to do to someone.

 

With that said, it's hard not to chuckle at this situation.

[kydoty]

 

Outing someone as gay is a pretty horrendous thing to do to someone.

 

With that said, it's hard not to chuckle at this situation.

 

I agree, but at the same time, I have little sympathy for a closeted gay politician who spends his life persecuting gay people in order to give the impression that he isn't gay to his constituents.  Regardless of the motives, his actions are deplorable.

 

And as recent history has taught us, he's not the first secretly gay politician and he certainly won't be the last. 

[ashbury]

Outing someone as gay is a pretty horrendous thing to do to someone.

 

With that said, it's hard not to chuckle at this situation.

Loud hypocrisy trumps privacy and is always lol-worthy anyway.

[Mike Sixel]

He's a politician repressing rights....I have zero sympathy for him. None.

[JB_Iowa]

In this case, it doesn't make any difference whether the recipient was male or female. The idiot should be outed for being a pervert, sending this type of photo (regardless of the website).  

 

We lecture teens, young adults to be very careful about sending photos even to their partners and that what they do/say/send over the internet may come back to haunt them.  I see no reason to apply a lower standard to adults.

 

What an idiot this man is.

[Willihammer]

Yeah I would have sympathy for him at 15 but at 52? If you haven't come out by then that is not good. He seemed grateful anyway.

[Brock Beauchamp]

I think it's a slippery slope to advocate that a guy "deserves" to have something rotten done to him just because he's a rotten human being. I don't buy into that argument.

 

I don't feel even a little bit of sympathy for the man and I dislike him as a human being but that doesn't mean I necessarily agree with what was done to him. He has a right to a private life, even if it's hypocritical.

 

Whether I adore or despise a person, I can't get behind them being publicly outed as gay. I've known far too many closeted gays and the trauma outing can have on their lives to agree with such a thing happening to anyone.

 

This is one of those curious instances that reminds me the left can be just as vindictive and wrong-headed as the right when it suits their purposes.

[Mike Sixel]

I agree, no one should have bad things done to them.....I just feel no sympathy at all.

[Brock Beauchamp]

And that's fair. I don't have any sympathy for the man, either.