Republican CA Senator Comes Out

This isn't terribly surprising:

Republican Sen. Roy Ashburn, who has been on leave from the Senate since his DUI arrest last week, confirmed today that he is gay.

"I'm gay," Ashburn told KERN radio host Inga Barks in an interview this morning. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long."

Ashburn's announcement follows reports that Ashburn was leaving a gay club before he was arrested for driving under the influence last week.

The Bakersfield Republican, who has consistently voted against gay-rights measures, said his votes were a reflection of how the majority of voters in his conservative district would have wanted him to vote....

Ashburn said on the radio show: "My votes reflect the wishes of the people in my district. I have always felt that my faith and allegiance was to the people, there, in the district, my constituents. And so as each of these individual measures came before the Legislature I cast 'no' votes, usually 'no' votes, because the measures were . . . almost always acknowledging rights or assigning identification to homosexual persons."

What's interesting to me about this is his explanation for what has been described by activists as an "anti-gay voting record". According to Ashburn he was representing the will of his district, something far too many representatives from both parties have forgotten how to do. And I still believe the being gay does not mean you have to automatically support every initiative that's promoted as "gay rights" any more than every women is required to support everything billed as "women's rights" or "reproductive rights".