Roy Ashburn: I'm Gay

"I'm gay," State Senator Roy Ashburn told a radio host from his central California district in an interview this morning. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long."

Ashburn said in the interview that he repeatedly voted against gay rights because he was representing the views of his conservative constituents.

I note, by the way, as this article and this article make clear, that Ashburn has had several opportunities to be honest. Which makes me want to ask if representing his constituents means lying to them, because he has engaged in deliberate, organized, and careful deceit for years.

My questions in this earlier post on Ashburn still remain, but I'm increasingly less sympathetic to Ashburn's hypocrisy—still fully-functional in the interview. He deliberately lied to his constituents, which largely much negates his explanation that he was "representing" them. I get that he's in very bad shape psychologically, but he repeatedly damaged himself, the queer community, and his own constituents.

As Sacramento's gay mayor says:

"To live a secret life and at the same time be attacking exactly the people who you're one of -- but that you're too ashamed to admit—that's the hypocrisy that I think for folks, whether you're gay or not, is just unacceptable in politics."

I think Mayor Cabaldon's additional observations here are spot on:

The hypocrisy - that's what's problematic. The notion that you think it's OK to live in the community and expect that you're going to be safe and protected when you are, during the daytime, doing everything to deny those protections

The bottom line for me is: if an elected representative is lying about who he is, and using his votes to hurt his constituents (since I suspect that at least some of his constituents are queer) I can't help but wonder what else he's lying about? Who else is he exploiting?