Maine Governor Paul LePage has
distanced himself from two anti-gay activists attempting to defend
his earlier Vaseline remark.
LePage, a Republican, has apologized
for using a sexually vulgar phrase to describe how state Senator Troy
Jackson, a Democrat, has, in his opinion, politicized the budget
process.
“Sen. Jackson claims to be for the
people, but he's the first one to give it to the people without
providing Vaseline,” LePage told two reporters. “He is bad. He
has no brains, and he has a black heart.”
In a press conference billed as a
defense of LePage, anti-gay activists Michael Heath and Paul Madore
commended LePage's remark.
(Related: At
Maine rally against Question 1, Mike Heath claims being gay is
“evil.”)
“It's addressing the issue of sexual
orientation, directly related to the comment that the governor made,
and nobody is defending the governor. We are defending the
governor,” Heath
told reporters.
A photo of a marine kissing his
boyfriend during a homecoming with the caption “America's Future?”
adorned the podium the men stood behind.
After the men equated homosexuality to
pedophilia, a reporter asked Heath and Madore if they were concerned
about being labeled as bigots.
“The reality is, don't you think we
stopped to think about that? Do you think that would trouble us that
people would be that shallow, that people would accuse us of being
bigots?” Madore said. “The bulk of homosexuals practice
pedophilia. There's a higher percentage of homosexuals that practice
pedophilia.”
Governor LePage's office released a
statement stating that the “group has no affiliation with the
Office of the Governor or the Governor, nor do they speak for the
Office of the Governor.”