Another Self-Loathing Gay GOP Scumbag is Pushed Out of the Closet

You gotta wonder who was about to blackmail Roy Ashburn for him to come out during a radio interview.

Well, wonder no more. In case you haven't been following this story, Ashburn essentially outed himself not once but twice. Says the LA Times:

A Republican state senator from conservative Bakersfield said Monday that he is homosexual, days after a report that he had been at a gay nightclub in Sacramento before being arrested on drunk driving charges while behind the wheel of his state car last week.

It ought to be noted that Ashburn is a married man and father of four.

Now, the infidelity shown by Republicans just in the past year or two involving Larry Craig, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, David Vitter and Ashburn's fellow California legislator and all-around douchebag Mike Duvall is galling enough.

But, like Larry Craig and Ted Haggard, here's yet another case of a man who was not only forced to admit trolling for cock behind his wife's back but he's also racked up one of the most despicable gay rights voting records in the entire California state legislature.

Says CNN Politics:

Last year, he voted against a bill to recognize out-of-state, same-sex marriages and against a bill proclaiming May 22 as "Harvey Milk Day," named after the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

Obviously, this is also a man who lauded Proposition H8, the 2008 election day referendum that immediately ended gay marriage in California.

Amazingly, when he essentially crashed out of the closet in a drunken stupor (not his first driving offense, by the way), he was publicly lauded by his fellow Republicans as if he'd done something on a par with finding a cure for cancer or singlehandedly taking the Remagen Bridge. It was reminiscent of Tom DeLay calling Duke "Whoremeister" Cunningham "a hero" and "an honorable man of high integrity" and the standing ovation given to David "Huggies" Vitter by his fellow Republicans.

But it's the infuriating hypocrisy that never ceases to outrage me. Here's a married man and father of four skulking around gay bars with the obvious intention of cheating on his wife and making a mockery of his marriage vows yet he votes against two men or two women marrying each other because that's the real threat to "traditional" marriage, don't you know?

And you'd think that barreling out of the closet in an alcoholic haze and admitting that he's a typical Republican philanderer would chasten him, that common decency and being brought down a few notches from his moral high horse would result in a more conciliatory position regarding gay rights.

But this is a Republican we're talking about. Ashburn promises to keep voting in his usual, self-loathing way because that's what his constituents would want, so he says. And every Republican in Sacramento who patted him on the back and put their hands together for him is essentially saying, "It's OK if you cheated on your wife trolling for cock in the dead of night. Full disclosure is heroic even when you're forced to come out because you were pulled over in your state vehicle with a blood alcohol count of .014."

In short, every Republican who treated him like a hero is also showing their contempt for traditional marriage. Every hand put on Ashburn's back was a slap in the face to gay rights activists who have been struggling for even a modicum of the same rights enjoyed by hypocritical, self-loathing Republican scumbags like Mike Duvall and Roy Ashburn.