Chula Vista Mayor Steve Padilla has been “out” to people in his personal and professional life since 1999, though his reluctance to discuss his private life in the media left the public largely in the dark.

It wasn’t until his appearance at last month’s San Diego Pride rally that Padilla took the crucial step forward into the broader sphere of public acknowledgment – and a big step it was. Padilla went from having his sexual orientation relatively unknown to becoming head of the second largest city in the country to have an openly gay mayor.

With his blessing, interim San Diego Mayor Toni Atkins casually introduced the 38-year-old father as a member of the gay and lesbian community.

While presenting a proclamation onstage, Padilla used levity to confirm “rumors” that he is in fact gay.

Padilla recently spoke with the Gay & Lesbian Times about his life, his coming out process, and his inadvertent status as a role model for young gay Latino and Latinas.

Padilla was born at the San Diego Naval Hospital. His parents dated while attending Sweetwater High School in National City. His mother’s family is from Portugal, and his father’s family from Mexico and Spain. Padilla’s father was a Marine who served in Vietnam and was later employed as a linesman for what was then Pacific Telephone. Padilla’s father died in an automobile accident when he was just 5 years old.

“My mother was seven months pregnant with my youngest brother at the time of his death,” Padilla recalled. “She was widowed very young with two small kids and one about to be born. After that, she bought a home in College Estates out in Chula Vista, which was across from Southwestern College. This was in 1971-72. At that time, that was the only housing out in eastern Chula Vista. It was the boondocks, the end of the world.”

Padilla’s mother eventually remarried. Though she has since passed away, Padilla considers his mother’s second husband his father.

In his senior year at Bonita High School, Padilla was accepted into the police academy. After graduation, he worked full time for the county as a legal procedures clerk, going on to serve as an investigator working on domestic violence and child abuse cases.

Padilla received his undergraduate degree in public administration from National University. Before seeking public office, Padilla also taught economics, U.S. history and world geography at Hilltop High School.

In his early 20s, Padilla was actively involved in several local races, as a member of the Young Democrats of San Diego County.

In 1994, Padilla was elected to the Chula Vista City Council, becoming the first Latino ever elected to office in Chula Vista. He was 27. Padilla was re-elected to the city council in 1998, going on to become mayor in 2002. Today, Padilla serves on the influential San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the California Coastal Commission.

In 1998, Padilla divorced his wife of four years. Not long after, he decided it was time to deal with an issue he had put off for the greater part of his life. Today, Padilla has sole custody of his 10-year-old daughter, Ashley. He currently resides with his partner of two years.

Padilla said the coming out process was incremental for him.

“I’ve just kind of eased my way into it, is how I put it. I knew probably deep down in the core of my being for a long time that I was gay.

“When I was in high school, there was no gay-straight alliance,” Padilla said. “Even joking about that stuff was not considered something to be looked upon favorably by anybody. I think that one goes through a process where the human mind can do some pretty amazing things to deal with pain and to avoid difficult and painful issues, and I think that you just convince yourself that those feelings and things are just a phase; that they’re just something you experimented with, but you really need to go on and marry and have children and be like everybody else…. I didn’t realize until much later how destructive that was.”

Despite an admittedly traumatic custody battle, Padilla said he currently has a good relationship with his ex-wife.

“My daughter’s mother is a great mom and she’s very supportive of me and my situation, but even if I were straight that marriage would have never worked. We’re just very, very different people to begin with. My sexual orientation was never something during the time I was married that I really dealt with directly or truly understood. It was not a factor in the breakup of the marriage. The marriage broke up because of a lot of other reasons.”

Padilla said the sudden and unexpected loss of his mother and his grandfather may also have facilitated his coming out process.

“I kind of think that was a catalyst for me to reassess my life and look deep inside myself and say, you know, you only come this way once and you need to live it with integrity and you need to be happy.”

Padilla said he told the bulk of his relatives during a family barbecue at his stepfather’s house, though he had already told some of his siblings.

“I just got them all in the room and sat them down and said, ‘Guess what?’ It took my father about maybe one minute to kind of say, ‘Yeah, that makes sense,’ and my grandmother sort of said, ‘Are you sure?’, but my family was very supportive and loving and wonderful about it….

“I just have gradually, over the years, been incrementally more and more comfortable about being more open about who I am.”

If Padilla’s sexual orientation was not as widely known among his constituents, people supporting his opponent in the 2002 mayoral race brought the fact to their attention.

“It was known during the mayor’s race pretty widely,” Padilla said. “There were people who were supporting my opponent who made it a point to go out and spread the word to voters, and some of my volunteers did run into that at the door when they were campaigning, but at the end of the day we won by eight points. I just don’t think it was an issue for most people who knew at the time.”

Padilla said he doesn’t believe his sexual orientation will be a factor when he runs for re-election next year.

“When the press coverage ran about my statements at Pride earlier this month, I got a few interesting e-mails and phone calls from people, but they were very few…. There are things that I talked about when I campaigned for mayor and I’ve delivered. I’ve had the most open and engaged administration of any in recent history that has engaged the community at a level that’s unprecedented, and I’m very proud of that. I think people in Chula Vista are going to judge me on my policies and my skills and the things that I’ve accomplished as mayor.”

Like many Latinos, Padilla was raised in the Roman Catholic Church.

“I don’t ascribe to that particular denomination anymore, but my family was not bigoted in any way,” he said. “We weren’t raised in a homophobic household, so I never really had my immediate family talking about gay people. It was just sort of something that was understood when I was growing up that probably my parents and generally people in our community at the time would have [found] abnormal. [If I were to come out at a young age], my mother would have probably sent me to a psychologist or something to make sure that I was OK.”

Questioned about his own Latin heritage and the family traditions he holds close, Padilla says it mostly centers around the cuisine.

“I love to cook,” Padilla said. “During the holidays I prepare a lot ethnic dishes that are relative to my Portuguese and Mexican heritage.”

Padilla’s specialty is tamales.

“I used to make them every year by the hundreds and freeze them. My brothers and I would get together and hang out and sit around and sip beer and listen to music and make tamales. I learned that from my grandmother and my mother, actually, who was taught by her mother-in-law.”

Asked for any words of wisdom he has for gay Latino and Latina youth finding their way in the world, Padilla said he would advise them to live their truth.

“Happiness is internal and there’s always hope,” he said. “That hope is going to spring from dealing with life honestly and with integrity. [There are] lyrics to a song that I like to quote. You know that old song, I did it ‘My Way’? There’s part of that song that says, ‘What is a man? What has he got? If not himself, then he has not.’ I think that if you don’t have yourself, then you don’t have anything.”

Ultimately, it’s through the courageous and ongoing act of GLBT people standing up to be counted that hearts and minds will be changed, Padilla said.

“I think that more and more Americans today realize through family or friends or acquaintances or coworkers that gay and lesbian people are all around them – they’re family members, they’re friends, they’re neighbors, they’re professionals, they’re doctors, lawyers, they’re everything. I think that as more and more of them are aware and more and more gays and lesbians are comfortable about being open about who they are, more and more Americans are going to come into contact with them in their everyday life and they’re going to realize that it’s going to be a lot harder to dehumanize an entire class of people, to make them the boogeyman or the enemy. A lot of people are going to have openly gay relatives or friends. They’re going to know people that they respect or like or consider friends. I think that the more people that are open and honest about who they are, the more you chip away at that base of bigotry.”