Recently fired Miami new anchor Charles Perez took his side of the story to the Daily Beast today, in a wide-ranging column explaining why he’ll continue his suit against ABC Affiliate WPLG-TV Channel 10, claiming they fired him because he was gay, attacking the state of the news business, positioning himself as a gay rights hero, and saying the station pressured him not to get married or have children with his male partner.
In his article, “Why I Committeed Career Suicide,” Perez said he believe’s WPLG “sold me out as soon as my being gay became too widely known. It made them uncomfortable and made me, in their eyes, less advertiser-friendly. They’d demoted me two weeks earlier from main weekday anchor to weekend anchor. It was a move I quickly recognized was leading to the door, and I wasn’t prepared to watch my career circle down the drain.”
Perez goes on to say that colleagues at work discouraged him from being open about his sexuality, too.
“In fact, over the previous five months, I’d been told, ‘Don’t get married, Charles. We don’t need that.’ I’d also been told not to have children. In essence: ‘You’re the main anchor and you’re gay, but let’s not push it.’ To me, having the family I want is not pushing it. Living with love, commitment, and dignity is not pushing it.”
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Earlier this year, details of Perez’s personal life were publicized when over a domestic violence battle with his former partner, Dennis Ricardo Peña, whom Perez claimed had ‘’stalked, harassed and threatened” him, and vowed to wreck his TV career. That case receives further deliberation in court in Miami on August 18.
Read the entire article at the Daily Beast.