Young GOP leader accused in gay sex crime

On July 7, after a six-month campaign, 33-year-old Glenn Murphy Jr. was elected chairman of the venerable Young Republican National Foundation.

Last week, however, Murphy sent out a strange e-mail announcing his resignation, explaining that a "life-altering" business deal had arisen and, after praying with his family, he had decided to pursue this new opportunity. For some reason, Murphy could no longer represent a political party due to a "gut-wrenching dilemma" that forced him to step down from his new office.

In fact, as bloggers soon made public, Murphy had been accused of what is called in Indiana "criminal deviate conduct," a class B felony, after attempting to have sex with a sleeping man July 29.

According to a police report from Clark County, Ind., the man, his sister, and Murphy had been drinking at a Young Republican party the previous night. The revelers wound up at the sister's home, where Murphy got into a top bunk bed and the victim took the bottom bunk.

Sometime that morning the victim awoke to find Murphy, in his words, "holding my dick with one hand and sucking my dick with his mouth," police records state. The man kicked Murphy off and left the house.

Later that day, Murphy called the man to explain that he had found himself lying on the floor beside the man's bunk. The man, Murphy said, had fondled Murphy's hair in his sleep, so Murphy took this gesture as a green light for further intimacy. Unconvinced by this alibi and unmoved by Murphy's pleadings, the man filed a complaint.

This was apparently not the first time Murphy had been unable to control his attraction to unconscious men. Another Clark County police report described an incident in 1998 in which Murphy crawled under the covers with a sleeping acquaintance "and was committing the act of oral sex when [the victim] awoke." The victim's girlfriend, who was in the same room at the time, heard her friend yell and observed Murphy extracting himself from the bedclothes and leaving the room.

Evidently, the 1998 incident stayed under wraps, since Murphy went on to become the county leader of the Young Republicans later that year. According to the local press, he served two terms as head of the Indiana Young Republicans and has been the Clark County GOP chairman since 2001.

The national group, an organization of Republicans ages 18 to 40, was founded in 1931.

After his election last month Murphy said he hoped to double the organization's membership by November 2008.

"I will essentially be the mouthpiece and effective leader for tens of thousands of Young Republicans 18 to 40 across the country," he said.

All references to Murphy have now been erased from the Young Republican Web site. (Ann Rostow, Gay.com)