A belated and unsurprising admission from an anti-gay legislator

Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-CA), not-longer-closeted anti-gay Republican hypocrite

Last Thursday, I commented on the report that Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-CA), the anti-gay legislator who’s voted down every single gay rights measure since taking office in 2002 – not that it stopped any single one of them from passing – and was then arrested Wednesday night at about 2 AM for DUI after having spent the night at a local gay bar. (He was also reportedly accompanied by a male passenger, but nothing more is known on this detail.) I found it amusing, as one should, that such an adamantly anti-gay legislator, who’s tried (futilely) to prevent gay people from enjoying so many basic rights and benefits, has basically been “caught in the act”; it appeared that he was, indeed, closeted.

Well, he ain’t closeted no more – by his own admission, in fact.

Republican Senator Roy Ashburn, who has been on leave from the Senate since he was arrested and charged with DUI last week, said in an interview on KERN radio in Bakersfield, “I’m gay. Those are the words that have been so difficult or me for so long,” , the Sacramento Bee reported.

Mr Ashburn, a 55-year-old divorced father of four from Bakersfield, was arrested last week after reportedly leaving Faces, a gay nightclub in Sacramento, according to cbs13.com. The station also reported there was a male passenger in the car at the time.

Mr Ashburn said in the radio interview his anti-gay votes were a reflection of what the majority of voters in his conservative district would have wanted.

What a dumb excuse. Somehow, I rather doubt that the majority of his constituents wanted him to rule that, amongst other things, out-of-state same-sex marriages should not be recognized, that Harvey Milk Day should not be implemented, and particularly, that sexual orientation ought not to be a trait that’s covered by anti-discrimination laws.

As hypocritical and downright stupid it appears to be that he voted against the very rights and liberties that would have applied to people of his own sexual orientation, it does raise the interesting question: why? To me, it sounds like he was simply trying to cement his position as being absolutely not gay – you know, by voting against every gay-friendly measure. This sounds like little more than deep-seated self-loathing to me … In a way, this almost makes me want to feel sorry for him. But then, I remember his pervasive hypocrisy and dishonesty, and much of my sympathy melts away.

If anything, his case is perhaps just the latest example showing how whilst tolerance and open-mindedness towards such benignly trivial things as which gender one is attracted to may be greater than ever in this modern day and age, we still have lots of work to do if we truly want everyone to feel accepted for who and what they are. Maybe there would then be less closeted people like Ashburn, who then might not have felt the need to reinforce his image as the anti-gay bigot his voting record made him out to be. Just a thought.