This is a follow-up to an article I shared a few days ago. Now Brooke Ashjian, the anti-LGBT, Mormon school board president in Fresno, California received a "slap" from the school district administration for some inflammatory comments he made to a reporter.

http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/education/article165919527.html

Ashjian's comments include the following:

"You have kids who are extremely moldable at this stage, and if you start telling them that LGBT is OK and that it’s a way of life, well maybe you just swayed the kid to go that way,” Ashjian said. “It’s so important for parents to teach these Judeo-Christian philosophies.”

Interestingly (to me at least), Bob Nelson, the school superintendent who issued the inclusivity statement is also Mormon.

The guy is a first-rate @$$ in my opinion, and frequently makes inane comments. Back in the day, Mormons occasionally chose to stay in Fresno. Since then, they've more or less made a mass exit northeast to the suburb of Clovis. It's more affluent and more socially conservative, and the schools are generally much safer. I'm curious as to why Ashjian stayed in Fresno. Perhaps he wanted to be a big fish in a smallish LDS pond. He probably wouldn't be elected president of a school board in Clovis. I don't know what his church calling is.

I'm also curious as to his story in terms of how he came to be LDS. His surname is Armenian. Fresno has a large Armenian population. He doesn't look as though he's more than half-Armenian, but it's not an ethnicity that has taken all that well to the COJCOLDS. I'd love to know how he or his family became LDS. His wife is supposedly from Bakersfield, but her parents migrated to CA from the morridor.

SCMD not logged in Wrote:
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> I'm also curious as to his story in terms of how
> he came to be LDS. His surname is Armenian. Fresno
> has a large Armenian population. He doesn't look
> as though he's more than half-Armenian, but it's
> not an ethnicity that has taken all that well to
> the COJCOLDS. I'd love to know how he or his
> family became LDS. His wife is supposedly from
> Bakersfield, but her parents migrated to CA from
> the morridor.

I researched my own question with limited success. It appears, despite his Armenian surname, that Ashjian was probably born into an LDS family. Jon Scott Ashjian, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada as a Tea Party candidate in 2010, is Brooke Ashjian's probably brother.

Brooke Ashjian's given name is Tere Brooke Ashjian. Even ancestry.com mistook his name for the name of a female. Perhaps he has a complex of sorts.