N.S. mayor comes out after being threatened
Clarke a likely candidate to lead provincial Tories MY PERSONAL LIFE IS NO LONGER UP AS A PUNCHING BAG FOR ME POLITICALLY.
SYDNEY, N. S .• The mayor of Nova Scotia’s second- largest municipality has come out as gay, saying he decided to speak publicly after someone threatened to expose his personal life.
Cecil Clarke, mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality and a likely leadership candidate for the province’s Progressive Conservatives, spoke out about his private life in an interview with CBC on Thursday.
The 49-year-old politician said he didn’t want to run for the Tory leadership with people thinking they could shame him or hold something over him.
“I’m not going to go forward and announce my intentions about the Progressive Conservative party leadership race having people think that they’re going to shame me ... that being gay is somehow a bad thing,” he told CBC Sydney’s Mainstreet.
“Who I am and how I go about my personal life is no longer up as a punching bag for me politically.”
Clarke said he’s in a committed relationship with someone he loves and who supported his decision to speak publicly.
“That man is very special to me and I’m not prepared to go on my future journey alone,” he said. “I’m not going to do it ashamed or afraid or not proud of who I am as a person.”
Still, he described the threats against him as prompting“a very dark time” that brought him to a low point.
“When I was four and then seven, I was sexually assaulted as a child and I thought I recovered very well from that,” Clarke said. “I had the love of a family that was there for me and a community that supported me. And this week, all of that hurt and pain came barrelling back and I said ‘ You don’t own this, you don’t own me.”’
The Sydney Mines native served in the provincial legislature as a PC MLA for a decade before returning to Cape Breton to become mayor in 2012. He is expected to announce whether he will run for the PC leadership Saturday.