shocking news: anti-gay legislator turns out to be gay!

[topaz]

The big story of the day: anti-gay California state senator Roy Ashburn was arrested for DUI, allegedly after having left a gay bar earlier in the evening.  (Hat tip to mzrowan for bringing this to my attention and for hunting down the original story that broke.)

What's interesting to me is how much skepticism I've seen of this story.  And it's true, there are a lot of legitimate objections: they haven't named their sources.  The manager of the bar says she never saw him there that night.  He was blocks away from the club when the police pulled him over, so it's unlikely they witnessed him leaving.

Here's why I believe the story:

This morning there are lots of articles all over the news reporting that people have been asking Ashburn about his sexuality for years and getting non-denial denials. The mayor of Sacramento says he regularly sees Ashburn at gay clubs.

Why would these people let him go on like this and not say anything?  The usual reasons people let people stay closeted: he's powerful, they don't want to make waves, they don't want to invade his privacy, etc. etc. etc.  It's hard to be the first person to say this and risk being dismissed as a crank or a rabble-rouser.

What it really sounds like is that it was an open secret in local circles that Ashburn was just another a closeted anti-gay legislator and no one wanted to be the first person to address it, so no one did.  Until CBS13 printed the story yesterday.   And once someone has started talking about it, it's a lot easier for everyone else to start talking about it.  Which they now appear to be doing.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I was about to wonder aloud why ex-NBA star Kevin Johnson was frequenting gay clubs but then i read the article and noticed the mayor in question was from West Sacramento.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, if I had to bet, I'd bet that it will prove true. (It's not exactly an uncommon story.) On the other, it's also true that a smear campaign against Ashburn would look a lot like this, with unsourced rumors and claims that would be difficult to verify or debunk by political opponents. Open secrets do have a way of producing witnesses who "knew all along". However, so do witch hunts.

("Now that you mention it, I *remember* her saying something about cursing my cow. Also, there was that time she danced naked with Satan." "*gasp* Danced?!?")

Here's hoping the truth eventually is arrived at, one way or another.

(I was going to say "the truth comes out", but...)

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

Open secrets do have a way of producing witnesses who "knew all along". However, so do witch hunts.

Yup, it's kind of maddening.

Whether or not he's gay

[harimad.livejournal.com]

If it's none of my business if he's gay, why is it his business if I am?

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Do his statements or the legislation he voted on make it his business? I.e., has he voted for bills that would enquire into others' sexual orientation? Most of the bills I see listed-- same-sex marriage, antidiscrimination legislation, etc.-- go the other way. (To make a group a protected class, the government has to determine that A is a member of the class while B is not. Limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples makes no enquiries about orientation, or the usual outed Republican-- I don't know about Ashburn-- wouldn't be toting a wife and kids to the early press conferences.)

On the other hand, Ashburn may also, for all I know, have sponsored a bill to restore sodomy laws or something, which would be making it his business. Anyone know?

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[wotw]

lhn: Thank you for drawing exactly the right distinction.

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why any of this is relevant to the matter of Roy Ashburn.

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[harimad.livejournal.com]

Let's see, shall we? [some period of online research later]

The best I found online was a scorecard (http://www.capitolresource.org/oneadmin/_files/File/2008-CRFI-Legislative-Scorecard.pdf) of the conservative Capitol Resource Family Project. I don't think any of the Ashburn's votes would meet your requirement.

Your requirement makes me uneasy but I'll have to think harder on it to put my finger on why. Further developments in the police investigation may end up being relevant.

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[dot_fennel]

I don't think I follow. Maybe you're making the point that none of Ashburn's favored laws would affect his ability to go into a gay bar. But then outing Ashford still amounts to revealing a conflict of interest-- he invidiously favors his own chosen style of being gay over that of people who want to get married.

(Why does the concept of protected classes matter here? The ethics of outing aren't tied to questions of Constitutionality, as far as I know.)

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[lhn.livejournal.com]

I was just speaking to the question of "why is it his business if I am [gay]?". It's not clear to me that he's made identifying anyone else's orientation his legislative business. (If the claims about his personal life are correct, he's presumably made it his business on the individual level.) Whether a politician who votes to keep homosexuality out of the public sphere and under the radar should be permitted to keep his own gay activities out of the public sphere and under the radar is a different question.

Is it really a conflict of interest, though? It's not as if any of the legislation he favors or opposes makes closeted guys going to gay clubs better off per se, as far as I can see. Unless he figures keeping people from getting married makes them more likely to be hanging out at the club, or keeping teh gay out of sex education produces more naive newcomers in need of guidance from an older man. Now, that "state legislators drink free" initiative that covered only gay clubs in Sacramento was a little suspicious, I admit. (Then again, given what precipitated all this, I guess even that wouldn't necessarily work out to his advantage...)

Whether or not he should be allowed to keep his personal life private, though, he probably should have anticipated that he wouldn't be permitted to. If it's true, I'm surprised it remained under wraps for as long as it did. (Though it probably helps that reporters sniffing after the next Larry Craig or Monicagate are probably aiming higher than state senator.)

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I was just speaking to the question of "why is it his business if I am [gay]?". It's not clear to me that he's made identifying anyone else's orientation his legislative business.

That's an unusually narrow way to interpret the question. There are many ways in which legislators "make it their business" with regard to their constitutents' sexuality, without identifying the sexual orientation of any individual citizen. Pretty much any law which treats citizens differently depending on their sexual orientation -- laws restricting what kind of jobs a gay person can hold, whether they may be served alcohol, or whether they may get married -- all count as "making it their business" by any reasonable interpretation.

Is it really a conflict of interest, though? It's not as if any of the legislation he favors or opposes makes closeted guys going to gay clubs better off per se, as far as I can see.

That's also a strangely narrow way in which to read the situation. If Roy Ashburn's total interest in same-sex relationships amounts to remaining closeted and going to gay clubs from time to time, there might be something in that. That's quite possible. But it's unlikely.

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Pretty much any law which treats citizens differently depending on their sexual orientation -- laws restricting what kind of jobs a gay person can hold, whether they may be served alcohol, or whether they may get married -- all count as "making it their business" by any reasonable interpretation.

If those laws enquire into the person's sexual orientation, sure. (Including as a group; a law that allowed bars in a zoning region but not gay bars, say.) Which laws along those lines did he vote for that you're thinking of?

Re marriage, the law, in its majestic equality, allows gay people as well as straight people to marry anyone they like past a certain age, outside forbidden degrees of consanguinity, and of the opposite sex. It couldn't care less that this happens to exclude all the people that some might wish to marry. I don't happen to think most states' laws on that last bit are just (and might quibble with the boundaries of some states' positions on some of the others, for that matter). But if anything, that's a failure to take orientation into account. (No marriage license bureau will ask your orientation before giving or denying the marriage license.)

Failing to make something the law's business (like, say, the fact that gay people want to get married, and not to partners of the opposite sex) can also be unjust, of course.

That's also a strangely narrow way in which to read the situation. If Roy Ashburn's total interest in same-sex relationships amounts to remaining closeted and going to gay clubs from time to time, there might be something in that. That's quite possible. But it's unlikely.

Aside from possibly boosting his political career (which is presumably a big point of any politician supporting any legislation), is he benefiting from the laws he's voting for? Is he doing so in a way that's obscured by his keeping his alleged gay nightlife private? Where does the conflict of interest lie?

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[dot_fennel]

Voting for a ban on gay marriage is "keeping homosexuality out of the public sphere" only in the sense of suppressing or quashing things gay people might otherwise do. Keeping word of one person's homosexuality from spreading any farther than their partners, on the other hand, is in no way discouraging that person from being gay or having same-sex relationships.

(It sounds funny to think of an SSM ban as stopping anything, since in most of the US that's the status quo-- same-sex partners can't marry. But in anything remotely resembling a civil rights issue, giving extra weight to the status quo when deciding what's actually correct is a recipe for cruelty and dumb results.)

I jumped a couple of steps with that 'conflict of interest' comment. What I meant was...

Honestly, I would guess that Ashburn's gay-bar attendance and his policy prefs aren't actually reconciled inside his head-- that it's more like feeling above the law, or being in denial, or something.

But suppose they are! Suppose he, across the board, feels that of course gay people deserve lives filled with love and affection and the company of like-minded people who form a community around them-- the drives that send people to gay bars and to wedding planners alike-- but thinks a marriage ban is no serious imposition on that.

It strikes me as a weird position, but legislators take all kinds of weird positions, and when all else is equal we try to assume they're acting in good faith: doing what their staff's research supports, enacting the policies they think are best for the state, whatever. If his personal history pushes him in that direction, though, then voters and fellow legislators who are deciding what they think about the marriage ban should give a different weight to the implied authority you get by deliberating seriously.

These personal stories don't always cut against a legislator's bills. If a senator supports his MS-research-funding bill by talking about his experience having a parent with multiple sclerosis, I might think, "He's seen this up close; he knows the good this bill could do better than me." But so be it. I'll be very surprised if people think, "Ashburn knows first-hand how rich and beautiful gay life can be without the right of legal marriage! If he thinks they don't need it, that's good enough for me."

Re: Whether or not he's gay

[wotw]

But suppose they are! Suppose he, across the board, feels that of course gay people deserve lives filled with love and affection and the company of like-minded people who form a community around them-- the drives that send people to gay bars and to wedding planners alike-- but thinks a marriage ban is no serious imposition on that.


Or alternatively, he might think that a marriage ban is a serious imposition on that, and that this serious imposition is a very bad thing, but that the ban has offsetting advantages that make it desirable.

I certainly have friends like that. I know them well enough to be as sure as I can be that they bear no overt or hidden animus toward gay people, and that they sincerely regret the hardships caused by marriage bans---but who nevertheless support those bans for reasons that have nothing to do with animosity. I happen to be entirely unmoved by those reasons, but I accept the fact that good honest caring people might sometimes disagree with me.