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News

When The Outed Tries to Out the Outer: Being Gay & the Glendale City Council

Mike_Mohill.jpg
Mike Mohill (via Glendale Votes)

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It began last week during a Glendale City Council meeting, when incumbent candidate John Drayman announced to the room that his opponent, candidate Mike Mohill, "had been arrested three times, twice in the 1980s for soliciting lewd acts in a public place," according to the Advocate. It took a few days, but Mohill offered up the ultimate comeback at last night's meeting, says Montrose Patch, first admitting that he is, in fact gay, and then claiming his accuser is gay himself.During last night's meeting, "Mohill revealed that, though he has been married since 1977, he is gay, and that the two charges brought against him in the '80s for solicitation of lewd acts were the product of him having 'gay sex in public.'"

However, Mohill didn't stop there. He admonished Drayman for making the campaign "personal," and added that his opponent is "reputed to be gay himself."

To that, Drayman spoke at the end of the City Council Meeting and told those present if they wanted to know how outrageous that claim was, they should refer to a community newspaper that apparently frequently writes pieces about gay relationships in local politics. Patch describes Drayman's tone as sarcastic as he summarizes that the paper, the Vanguardian, reports about his alleged "affair with Jason Wells, who is the city editor of the Glendale News-Press," and the pair's "secret rendezvous," adding that the paper also alleges other local political players are involved in same-sex trysts.

A relative of Mohill says he has just learned of Mohill's sexuality, and that Mohill's wife has been protecting her husband's sexuality willingly for years.

Glendale's municipal election is April 5th.

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