Appearing Tuesday on MSNBC's The Ed
Show, openly gay Colorado Congressman Jared Polis attacked
Senator Jim DeMint's no-gay-teachers comment.
According to the Spartanburg
Herald-Journal, the 59-year-old DeMint told a crowd at a
Spartanburg Baptist Church that 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 things], no one
came to my defense,” the Republican, a Tea Party favorite, 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.”
On the program, Polis, a member of the
House Committee on Education and Labor, said the idea would destroy
public education and suggested that that might be DeMint's real
agenda.
“A school district should investigate
the personal lives of all their teachers? Find out who their single
women teachers are sleeping with?” Polis rhetorically asked host Ed
Schultz. “This is contrary to our values as Americans.”
“I would say this would be a huge
threat to public education. … It would destroy many of our public
schools.”
“And maybe his real agenda is to
destroy public education. I mean if you look where the agenda goes,
gutting schools, vouchers; I mean they are looking at destroying
public education.”
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest gay advocate, also criticized DeMint's comments: “I
can't imagine what people think is 'moral' about job discrimination.”
A DeMint spokesman told
all-things-political website Talking Points 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.