{"id":189587,"date":"2010-03-08T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/03\/08\/this-is-a-change\/"},"modified":"2010-03-08T19:55:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T00:55:00","slug":"this-is-a-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/03\/08\/this-is-a-change\/","title":{"rendered":"This is a Change\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I wrote about California State Senator Roy Ashburn, who <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2010\/03\/republican-family-values.html\">was caught driving drunk as he left a gay bar<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, in what is a refreshing change for Republicans,<sup>*<\/sup> he has <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2010\/03\/ashburn_im_gay.php\">admitted that he is gay<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m gay,&#8221; State Senator Roy Ashburn told a radio host from his central California district in an interview this morning. &#8220;Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ashburn, a divorced father of four, said that his many votes against gay rights were efforts to represent the conservative views of his constituents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the most evil bit of nastiness that I&#8217;ve heard in a while.<\/p>\n<p>We all harbor our own prejudices, and the best that one can hope for is to recognize them for what they are, understand that they are <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">wrong<\/span>, and not act on them.<\/p>\n<p>While I understand how people can hate for irrational reasons, it&#8217;s worse to hate for a rational reason.<\/p>\n<p>This man did not have an irrational hatred and fear of gays, but he <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">led anti-gay rallies<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>He did so for the most prosaic of reasons:  He wanted to hold elected office.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">But not outed Democrats, see McGreevy, James.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I wrote about California State Senator Roy Ashburn, who was caught driving drunk as he left a gay bar. Well, in what is a refreshing change for Republicans,* he has admitted that he is gay: &#8220;I&#8217;m gay,&#8221; State Senator Roy Ashburn told a radio host from his central California district in an interview &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969,1051,1030,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evil","category-hypocrisy","category-lgbtq","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}