GOP’s Roy Ashburn opens up about his sexual orientation: ‘I was hiding. I was so in terror’
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In an in-depth interview with The Times’ Patt Morrison, Sen. Roy Ashburn opened up about his DUI arrest, his coming out as gay and why he kept his sexual orientation secret for so long. Ashburn, a Bakersfield Republican, was arrested for driving under the influence in the early morning of March 3, after he’d left a gay night club. He soon publicly announced he was gay.
With Morrison, he spoke about a memory from his childhood about the seeming incompatibility of being both an elected official and gay.
Something happened that I guess caused me to realize that. When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind — the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press — at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you’re in secret, I mean, there really wasn’t a choice.
Ashburn revealed that, in his words, he had become “increasingly bold about attending gay events” in recent years, including gay pride festivals in San Diego and Las Vegas.
He also addressed his voting record which, until his announcement, had been staunchly against gay rights. He was, he said, “paralyzed by this fear” of being outed.
“The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic ‘no’ vote,” Ashburn said.
See the rest of the interview — and Ashburn’s thoughts on everything from term limits to modern Republicanism — here.
-- Shane Goldmacher in Sacramento