It’s no secret that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss supports keeping openly gay people out of the military. But now it seems one of his Atlanta staffers takes that anti-gay animus a few steps further with threatening slurs.
As Chambliss and Republican senators beat back an effort Tuesday to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a commenter on Joe. My. God. left this screed on a post about the vote: “All faggots must die.”
A little web sleuthing by blog author Joseph Jervis tracked the IP address of the person who left the comment to an area near the Atlanta office of Chambliss along Interstate 75 near the Cobb Galleria. Readers of the popular blog helped hone in on Chambliss’ office after some initial speculation placed the comment’s origination at the nearby office of Sen. Johnny Isakson.
“Among the fields in which gay people are over-represented is the IT field,” Jervis quipped to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, whose political reporter, Jim Galloway, first reported the brewing comment flap Tuesday on his Political Insider.
Isakson’s staff said the comment didn’t come from their office. And now a staffer for Chambliss says that office is “moving quickly” to investigate.
“We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts. This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged,” Chambliss spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said. “Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps.”
During a Senate hearing about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in February, Chambliss expressed concern that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would cause a host of problems and “create unacceptable risk to the armed forces.”
Chambliss acknowledged that while the military enforces “restrictions on personal behavior that would not be acceptable in civilian society,” it “must maintain policies that exclude persons whose presence in the armed forces would create unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion.”
“In my opinion,” he said, “the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would very likely create an unacceptable risk to those high standards.”
Chambliss also opined that allowing openly gay soldiers would lead to “alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art.” When criticized for the comments, Chambliss remained defiant.
Chambliss received a failing score on the latest Congressional scorecard from the Human Rights Campaign.
