Radio host angers gay community with family views
A prominent San Francisco radio host and television news anchor is under fire this week from city officials and LGBT community leaders or comments he made on the air about non-traditional families.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Pete Wilson, the anchor of ABC’s local evening news and host of a radio show on KGO 810 AM, criticised Supervisor Bevan Dufty and his friend Rebecca Goldfader, who are sharing a home and co-parenting a newborn, during a radio broadcast.
Their daughter, Sidney, was born last week. Wilson, who said he supports same-sex marriage and lesbian and gay couples raising children, referred to her as an “experiment” because they’re not in a romantic relationship. reports the Chronicle.
“The Dufty-Goldfader baby is, in my mind, a travesty,” Wilson said on the air during his radio spot. “Or a potential travesty. Perhaps that’s a better way of saying it.”
The Chronicle reports that later in his show, Wilson said, “At some point there is a limit to how far we stretch the self-indulgent search for the alternative that we have been involved in the last 30 or 40 years in this country.”
According to San Francisco’s ABC7, Wilson’s comments angered politicians and leaders of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. Among them, gay Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who himself fathered a child with a lesbian friend.
“It’s a political issue for me and personal issue for me and it’s actually none of his business,” Ammiano told reporters.
“Let’s attack a kid. Let’s dehumanise a one-week old baby. Now if that isn’t bullying I don’t know what is.”
ABC7 reports that the speakers demanded Wilson resign. Some said KGO Radio ought to go further.
Wilson has worked in Bay Area media for more than 30 years and won Emmy and Peabody awards.
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