Republican guilty of soliciting gay sex
A senior Florida Republican has been found guilty of soliciting oral sex from an undercover police officer.
Bob Allen, a former co-chairman of the campaign to select Senator John McCain as the Republican US Presidential candidate, was spotted by police in Titusville, Florida on July 11th acting suspiciously at the men’s toilets in a park.
Officers decided to send a policeman undercover to investigate, and within minutes Mr Allen allegedly agreed to pay him $20 (£10) to allow him to perform oral sex.
He will be sentenced later this week and faces up to 60 days in jail and a fine.
Republican party representatives said he will be removed from office.
Mr Allen said he will ask for a re-trial.
He resigned from the McCain campaign when he was arrested but maintained he is innocent and will not resign from the state legislature.
Mr Allen told police that he was not loitering in the public toilet looking for sex.
The undercover police officer gave evidence that Mr Allen twice peered over the top of a toilet cubicle he was occupying, then entered the cubicle.
They discussed payment for oral sex, but Mr Allen was concerned the park toilet was too public.
As Mr Allen then indicated to the police officer to follow him outside to his car, he was arrested.
Representative Allen had sponsored a failed bill in the Florida statehouse earlier this year, the Lewdness and Indecent Exposure Bill, designed to increase the penalties for committing “unnatural and lascivious acts or exposure or exhibition of sexual organs committed within specified distance of certain locations.”
Since his election in 2000, he has been one of the most homophobic politicians in the Florida state senate.
He received the title of “Wicked Witch,” which is reserved for “The Worst of the Worst,” from Florida’s Rainbow Democratic Gay Lesbian organisation.
According to the biographical information provided on the Florida House of Representatives website, he is 48 and married with one child.
