Lancaster Opposes Gay Rights Bills; Official Quits in Protest

The Lancaster City Council voted Monday night to oppose pending state gay rights legislation, prompting Lancaster’s deputy city clerk to announce that he is a homosexual and resign on the spot in protest.

“I can’t support their bigotry. They use my skills. I promote (bigotry) by staying,” said Alan Robertson, the city’s deputy clerk and pastor of a local church group that caters to homosexuals.

Robertson, 44, who has worked for the city since last May, announced that he was a homosexual to a council chamber packed with more than 100 members of religious groups that had urged the council to oppose the state legislation. He later returned and handed a letter of resignation to City Clerk Patricia Gaylor.

Robertson’s protest came after the council voted 5-0 to oppose Assembly Bill 167, which would recognize marriages by couples of the same sex, and Assembly Bill 101, which would make it unlawful to discriminate in housing or employment on the basis of sexual orientation.

Robertson accused the council members, his employers, of violating the Brown Act, the state’s open-meetings law, by covertly conspiring with anti-homosexual religious groups to place the two bills on the council’s agenda so that the lawmakers could oppose them.