Phone records of
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the “D.C. Madam,”
revealed that a morally righteous Republican senator
had used her Washington escort service. Who’s
next?
When outspoken
“family values” supporter David
Vitter—a Republican senator from Louisiana who
has voted against same-sex marriage and adoption by
gays—was exposed in July as a former client of
“D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, he
became the biggest casualty to date in the ongoing
Madamgate scandal. Last March, Palfrey, 50, was indicted on
federal money-laundering charges for allegedly operating a
prostitution business in Washington from 1993 to
August 2006. She claims her escort service, Pamela
Martin and Associates, which she ran from her home in
Vallejo, Calif., was a legal high-end adult fantasy firm.
So she’s
been fighting fire with fire: In July she posted 46 pounds
of phone bills on her Web site, the better for
interested parties (like the Hustler magazine
journalist who broke the Vitter news) to suss out the
movers and shakers among her top secret clientele. She spoke
to The Advocate at a café near her home.
So who’s next after Vitter?
There will be more names coming out, names of people
below the level of Senator Vitter. These are the
people who are the real power movers in D.C., who are
responsible for our current state of affairs.
Were most of your clients Republicans?
Of late, I would say that’s more true than not.
But you have to remember that my business spanned two
administrations. This is a bipartisan kind of
business. All of this could fall out either way.
For many gay people, the real issue is not that someone
like Vitter used an escort service, but his hypocrisy.
I only knew him as “David from C Street.”
But what bothers me now is the issue of what
constitutes family. There are so many kids in need of a
family, and whatever family means, it’s wrong for him
to deny children a home when there are gay men and
lesbians who want to provide them.
Is there a bigger story here?
The bigger story is, What started this? I apparently was
under a Hoover–style investigation with the
government gathering evidence and building up a file
from March 2004 until they pulled the trigger last
October. They watched me. They spied on me. They were
running grand jury subpoenas to gather evidence on me.
In these days of diminishing rights, this is very
troubling.
What do you think they were looking for?
I think they—whoever “they”
are—thought I was sitting on a powder keg of
information, which is starting to prove to be true. I think
they wanted to use the information for some future
political reason or maybe to squeeze me in some
manner. It’s either this, which sounds kind of
extreme, or these are the most incompetent, dysfunctional
people I have ever encountered in my life.
Your legal defense is centered on Lawrence v.
Texas, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that
struck down gay sodomy laws on the basis that what
two adults do in private is private. Does this make you
feel more of an affinity with the gay community?
Absolutely. I always thought prostitution was
the next barrier after homosexuality. I always thought
once gays were accepted that the next barrier would be
prostitution. According to my civil attorney, the
[Lawrence] case is the foundation upon which prostitution
will be legalized in this country. And that is one of
our main motions.
Do you ever wish you had had a different type of career?
Would I like to have done other things?
I’d like to think that when this is all over
I’ll have done one heck of a job for a lot of people
exposing corruption. And that would be better than any
career I could have imagined, really.
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