Gay groups are calling on South
Carolina Senator Jim DeMint to apologize after telling a group of
conservatives that schools should reject gay and lesbian teachers,
the Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported.
In a speech Friday night at a
Spartanburg Baptist Church, the 59-year-old Republican said gay men,
lesbians and sexually active unmarried women are not fit to teach
children, and suggested that not banning such groups would be
un-Christian.
“[When I said those thing], no one
came to my defense,” DeMint told the crowd, referring to comments
he first made back in 2004. “But everyone would come to me and
whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government
purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”
Rea Carey, executive director of the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay rights group, called the
senator's remarks “irresponsible.”
“It is salt in the wound in our
community. It's irresponsible for Senator DeMint to reassert this
position in this day and age. I would ask him to apologize.”
“I can't imagine what people think is
'moral' about job discrimination,” the Human Rights Campaign (HRC),
the nation's largest gay rights advocate, said in a statement.
A DeMint spokesman told
all-things-political website Talking Point Memo that the
senator was “making a point about how the media attacks people for
holding a moral opinion.”
South Carolina voters are likely to
return DeMint to Washington in November. His rival, Democrat Alvin
Greene, is considered a long-shot.