Senator Roberto Arango of Puerto Rico
claims he's the victim in the gay sex scandal that forced him to
resign over the weekend.
In his resignation letter effective
August 31, Arango says his political enemies are to blame for his
downfall.
“I affirm with the utmost certainty
that the controversy which Puerto Rico's Senate and the city capital
is currently facing is the result of a sinister maneuver orchestrated
by my political enemies,” he
wrote.
When the Puerto Rican TV show Dando
Candela presented the conservative lawmaker with a photograph of
a naked man, he didn't exactly deny he was the subject of the
photograph: “You know I've been losing weight. As I shed that
weight, I've been taking pictures. I don't remember taking this
particular picture but I'm not gonna say I didn't take it. I'd tell
you if I remembered taking the picture but I don't.”
“It would be my pleasure to tell you
I'm the person in this photograph, but honestly I don't remember,”
he said with a big smile. (The video, in Spanish, is embedded in the
right panel of this page.)
When the reporter asked if he owned an
iPhone, Arango said he used an iPhone and a Blackberry.
In another photo, the man is perched on
a bed, bending over to snap a shot of his naked bum. Both photos
allegedly came from the same Grindr account.
Concerning the mobile hookup service
for gay and bisexual men, Arango said: “I've been a victim of my
own ingenuity and of technological advances that, upon falling in the
wrong hands, can be transformed into something very harmful.”
Arango is a member of the Republican
Party. He vice-chaired the 2004 reelection campaign of George W.
Bush. In 2009, he voted in favor of a measure that sought to
constitutionally ban gay marriage in Puerto Rico. He and his wife
have one child.