California state senator Roy Ashburn was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol at about 2:00 a.m. on March 3 when California Highway Patrol officers noticed that the senator's state-issued car was being driven erratically. Senator Ashburn had previously been at Faces, a gay nightclub that's been in business and a center for queer culture in Sacramento since the 1980s. Ashburn was placed under arrest for driving under the influence with a blood alcohol level higher than .08%. His unidentified male passager was not charged.

Local TV station CBS13 broke the news.

Ashburn, who is at the end of his reign because of term limits, is a Republican with a long history of ant-LGBT politicking. He has a 100% rating from anti-gay Capitol Resource Family Impact group for opposing every LGBT rights bill during his two terms. He has hosted and participated in Traditional Values Coalition rallies opposing same-sex marriage, though apparently, his traditional values do not extend to opposing divorce; Ashburn divorced his wife in 2003. Ashburn's record includes voting against the March 2009 Senate resolution declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional, and three votes opposing the creation of Harvey Milk Day. In September of last year, Ashburn voted against California recognizing other states' same-sex marriages. In 2008 he voted against expanding Californi's insurance laws to include sexual orientation as a protected class. This is someone who has repeated demonstrated hostility towards LGBT people.

You'll find all sorts of Republican homophobic legislators engaging in similar hypocrisy; Roy Ashburn is following in the footsteps, so to speak, of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, in the tradition of Republican Senator Mark Foley, accused of exchanging sexually provocative text messages with teenaged male pages and former male pages. I can understand why someone is struggling with sexual orientation and is in the closet; I'm not a fan of outing. But Ashburn was apparently inside Faces long enough to be intoxicated; presumably the unidentified male passenger was there as well. Ashburn, though, was not just in the closet, he was hostile to LGBT people at the level of voting against basic rights of queer tax payers like insurance and marriage.

But he likes to party with us. What are we to take away from this pattern of hypocrisy? It begs the question of whether the community owes privacy protection to someone who is attempting to destroy the community. This is a hard question for me. Part of me thinks yes, we do; it's the right way to be, even if we're protecting a hate-mongering scum bag. However, the community ethos is being exploited to our own detriment.

ETA: Update here.