Cecil Clarke, the mayor of Nova Scotia’s second-largest municipality, has come out as gay after someone threatened to out him.

Clarke, mayor of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, made the announcement in an interview with Canada’s CBC network:

Clarke said someone “wanting to possibly shame” him threatened to expose his personal life, so he made the decision to share the information himself.

“If that’s homophobia and the fact that I’m gay in political life, then shame on people that do that,” he told CBC’s Mainstreet Cape Breton.

Clarke is expected to announce on Saturday that he will seek the leadership of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party. He said he wanted to come out before then.

“I’m not going to go forward and announce my intentions about the Progressive Conservative Party leadership race having people think that they are going to shame me, or hold something over me, or make it negative that, in this day and age, that being gay is somehow a bad thing,” he said.

Added Clarke: “I hope on Saturday anyone that’s coming to hear me is there to support me as Cecil the politician and the fact that I am gay, if they have a problem with that as a Progressive Conservative, then they’re not my Progressive Conservative of today.”

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