US: Judge quits after ‘invasive’ reports reveal his gay hookup app profile
A Florida judge who struck down a ban on same-sex adoption has resigned from his post, following reports that he used gay hookup app Manhunt.
David Audlin, who served as Monroe County’s chief circuit judge, told the Miami Herald that the “inappropriate invasion of privacy” had led him to retire four years early.
In 2008, the judge declared unconstitutional a state law which banned gay and lesbian couples from adoption.
The judge’s profile on Manhunt was leaked online in January, leading to ridicule from some conservative bloggers, before he stepped down last week.
Audlin said: “I’m looking forward to my constitutional rights being restored — my right to privacy and to be left alone in my private life.
“I’ve been out since I was 23, and as an attorney and running as a judge, I never hid it.
“But I never made it an issue. It’s just part of who I am.
“I think some people look at a gay judge’s personal life as being interesting or salacious.
“I suppose it’s the times we live in. This whole matter has nothing to do with my service to the people or my work as a judge.”
In 2008, he wrote: “Florida’s 1977 gay adoption ban arose out of unveiled expressions of bigotry when the state was experiencing a severe backlash to demands for civil rights by gay people in Miami.”
“Disqualifying every gay Floridian from raising a family, enjoying grandchildren or carrying on the family name, based on nothing more than lawful sexual conduct (…) is disproportionately severe”.
