The mayor of a small Alabama town is facing a public backlash after writing in a Facebook comment that the only way to solve the country’s problems is to “kill out” the LGBTQ community, local media reported Tuesday.
Mark Chambers, the mayor of Carbon Hill, Alabama, made the comment in response to his own post listing what he saw as society’s ills. “We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights and socialists lecture us on economics,” he wrote.
A Facebook friend of his replied to the comment: “By giving the minority more rights than the majority. I hate to think of the country my grandkids will live in unless somehow we change and I think that will take a revolution.”
Chambers responded to that comment with his solution. “The only way to change it would be to kill the problem out. I know it’s bad to say but with out killing them out there’s no way to fix it.”
Chambers has since deleted the Facebook post, but after initially denying writing the post to the Birmingham station WBRC FOX6 News, he acknowledged writing the post but argued it was taken out of context. “I never said anything about killing out gays or anything like that,” he told the station. “That’s in a revolution. That’s right. If it comes to a revolution in this country both sides of these people will be killed out.”
He also admitted that he had thought he had been communicating in a private conversation with his Facebook friend, not commenting publicly.
According to the station, Chambers also took the time during his interview to rail against immigrants, whom he called “ungrateful.”
On Tuesday, he posted an apology on Facebook. “Although I believe my comment was taken out of context and was not targeting the LGBTQ community, I know that it was wrong to say anyone should be kill,” he said in the post.
Chambers made the original post on Friday, just one day before the start of Pride Month.
*story by Slate Magazine