US: City councilman comes under fire for sending email alert calling someone ‘gay’
A Washington, Pensylvania councilman has come under heavy criticism from the city’s mayor for sending out an email testing an alert system, in which he called someone gay.
City of Washington Mayor Brenda Davis, said that Councilman Matt Staniszewski, sent out a test email of the city’s transit system, which contained the inappropriate use of the word.
The email sent by Councilman Staniszewski read: “Alert: This is a test. Bryan is gay.”
Mayor Davis commented on the email. She said: “This is completely inappropriate and unprofessional coming from an elected official.”
She went on to say that a person who had signed up to receive the alerts had contacted the city to say that they were offended by the email, reports WPXI.
Councilman Staniszweski released a statement about the incident, contesting what he said were the mayor’s “unprofessional” assumptions about what he meant
He said: “It’s offensive and unprofessional for the mayor to automatically assume one definition of the word when there are multiple definitions.”
The mayor, who confronted the councilman on Monday night’s council meeting said that she did not know why he even had access to the password in order to send out the alert.
“His response was that he sent it out and it wasn’t him saying Brian is gay. He said gay means happy,” Davis said. “Maybe in the 1950s that’s what it meant, but we are in a new era now and that doesn’t represent the City of Washington.”
