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By John Earl,
Surf City Voice
After being sworn in last Monday for his first term on the Huntington Beach City Council, Joe Shaw, who is openly gay, said he wasn’t surprised that he was elected.
“When I first came to Huntington Beach with my then partner eight years ago,” he reminisced in his acceptance speech , “we opened a business downtown and at once we were warmly embraced by the people of downtown, our customers and people from all over the city.”
Shaw says he and his partner were accepted “unconditionally and without judgment” and that “I looked at this beautiful city and its wonderful people and knew I had found a new home.”
Surf City does offer domestic partner benefits for city employees, but its citizens also re-elected Dana Rohrabacher, one of the most homophobic representatives in Congress, by overwhelming vote margins for the past several decades.
Rohrabacher opposes marriage, adoption and military enlistment rights for openly gay or lesbian adults and he favors amending to the Constitution to define marriage as an act to occur between men and women only.
Rohrabacher’s anti-gay views might not be openly shared by most of his Surf City constituents, but they still hold sway in Orange County Republican politics and, at least indirectly, in Surf City politics.
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Shaw will concentrate on being the “best councilman I can be,” not the “gay city councilman,” he said. But he believes that his victory should provide hope to others.
“I must acknowledge it,” he said, “because it will make a difference in many peoples’ lives to know that this is possible in Huntington Beach and Orange County. It does get better.”
Lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered people want the same things in life that everyone else does, Shaw said, explaining the broader significance of his victory. “We want good schools, safe and well maintained streets, clean water and air, and abundant open space,” he said.
For his first-term priorities, Shaw hopes to tackle the city’s tough financial problems….
Read the rest of the story, including all Joe’s great plans for HB, at the Surf City Voice!
I campaigned for Joe worked with him on a couple of campaigns; his sexual orientation never once was an issue that I heard of. I’m surprised that Joe is the only openly gay councilmember in the county but its not like I follow that sort of thing. To me its of no more importance than the choice of what to have for dinner but this article does highlight that for some the general discrimination and b.s. you have to put up with is enough that they would rather remain in the closet than come out and be honest with everyone about who they are. When I decided to campaign for Prop 19 I had to decide if I was going to come out as a pot smoker to those beyond my small circle of pot associates. I did, it felt good and I’ve suffered no negative repercussions. OC can claim a lot of negative attributes but it can also claim a higher acceptance of everyone and their differences than most of the country. Glad to call Surf City my home!
I knew Joe for months and couldn’t even tell and it didn’t come up – until I visited him at home and his “then-partner” answered the door. But I think he’s totally right to acknowledge it up front and publicly now – see my response to DWM below.
Poor guy. 40+ and he still doesn’t own it.
WTF is “own it,” smart boy?
When gays make that distinction… the “I’m not a gay elected… just an elected” it’s clearly an indicator that they’re aren’t 100% comfortable in their own skin. Did anyone really think that he was going to be the “gay elected”? What would that entail exactly; re-decorating the council chambers? Having indiscriminate sex with strangers he met on the internet? What does that mean? It means he doesn’t know 100% how to deal with it.
I think the ideal is for a gay elected official to go about his life and elected office acting no different than a straight elected. Talk about your family, take care of the city’s business, all without the disclaimer about your sexuality and how it’ll effect your judgement, assuaging fears that your going to gay up local government.
I’ll also say, that from the time I first met Joe, he’s been getting increasingly more comfortable with striking this balance, and it’s clear that he’s making an effort. He’s going to be an awesome GAY councilmember.
Okay. Well, I think he struck the exact right balance. “Owning it” right up front, and then moving on. He and Connie Boardman will be great on the council, and we’re going for a MAJORITY of pro-public, pro-environment councilmembers in ‘012 when we run Blair Farley and Jill Hardy.
Not that it makes any difference, but other oc gays have said the same thing to me about Joe, but we also agree that he’s trying, and has been getting better about it. I don’t think he owns it, quite yet, his quoted “not the gay city councilman” tells me that.
too much info when we have to know about someones sex life. dadt.
You know, I sort of agree in general. But Joe is right to remember a couple of things – the long tradition of gay politicians trying to hide that fact about themselves, and the all-too-common depression and suicide among young gay people who don’t see enough proud and successful role models. Hence Joe’s reference to “it gets better.”
You should read the whole article, I think you’re an HB guy. In Joe’s opening statement after being sworn in, he spent about thirty seconds on the gay thing and how accepting HB is of it, and then he took about three minutes outlining all his ambitious plans for the city that he’ll be pursuing over the next 4-8 years. I liked the fact that he’d already been consulting with the new right wing councilman (Matt Harper) about embarking on a 25-year plan to modernize HB’s transportation.