Fort Worth Councilman Joel Burns and
the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) are speaking out against Clint
McCance, the Arkansas school board member who cheered the deaths of
gay teens.
“Clint McCance has put a face on the
hate that devastates our young people,” Joe Solmonese, president of
HRC, the nation's largest gay advocate, said in a statement.
“McCance and his hate shouldn't be allowed near children, let alone
managing their education. We call for his immediate resignation from
the school board.”
Solmonese is joined by more than 11,000
members from the Facebook group Fire
Clint McCance in calling for the Midland School District to
fire McCance.
In responding on his Facebook page to
Spirit Day, a day that encourages people to wear purple to remember
gay teens bullied to death, McCance
cheers the suicides, says he “enjoys the fact that [gay people]
they often give each other aids and die,” and declares he would
disown his children if they were gay.
Burns, the
openly gay councilman whose video of a recent speech on bullying at a
city council meeting has gone viral on the Internet, called
McCance a bully.
“I can assure you that changing the
course of just one potential lost life is worth our standing up to
the bullies like Clint McCance,” Burns wrote on his Facebook page,
gay
weekly the Dallas Voice reported. “Trustee McCance is a
failure as a responsible adult, an embarrassment to the good citizens
of Midland, and he has betrayed his community's trust.”