- Roy Ashburn
Two newspapers and the openly gay mayor of West Sacramento knew that California State Sen. Roy Ashburn was gay and said nothing about it, despite Ashburn’s anti-gay voting record. As Tammye noted below, Ashburn was arrested Wednesday on a DUI charge after leaving a gay bar. He had an unidentified man in the car with him. Here’s blogger Joe Jervis’ reaction to the news that no one spoke up:
At this moment, I’m not so interested in the detestable Roy Ashburn and his pathetic defense of “I was voting the way my constituents wanted.” Because to my mind, the biggest story here isn’t Ashburn’s closeted homosexuality and anti-gay voting record. As we all know, that is a story we have seen a hundred times. And will see a hundred times more. The REAL story here is the media’s collusion and the conspiracy of silence on the part of our own people. Folks, when you know somebody is actively working day and night to thwart the rights of your FAMILY, of your PEOPLE, you fucking say something.
Folks, if you have solid evidence about a possibly closeted lawmaker in Texas who is actively working against LGBT equality, please call us. And yes, that includes Gov. Rick Perry.
Last year, West Sacramento’s mayor wrote on his Facebook page:
“It wouldn’t bother me so bad to see Roy Ashburn at Badlands ( a gay bar) with a boy if he didn’t have such a bad voting record on gay rights.”
My point is that West Sacramento’s Mayor Cabaldon did, indeed, mention it in print for all to see. As a result, it was clearly an open secret among California’s politicians.
However, there’s a reason so many newspapers are going bankrupt. They just don’t or can’t cover the issues. Nobody wants to spend a dollar or two on a newspaper that’s less informative, less accurate, and less representative of society, than Mayor Cabaldon’s Facebook entries, which you can read for free.
What about Lindsay Graham from South Carolina? Everyone from Columbia seems to know he’s gay, but it’s still very hush hush.
There’s always some rumors of some of our own state reps that are gay and closeted, but nobody will out them.
And Rick Perry’s Son? Come on folks – you’ve got the resources and investigative reports to pull it off – make us proud!
He’s the Mayor of West Sacramento and the most he could do is post it to his Facebook page??
How is that getting the story out? Ever hear of blogger? twitter? How about an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee? At the very least he could have told Equality California’s lobbyists…