Liberal America reported this week on Rand Paul and his extremely bigoted comments regarding LGBT workers. On a visit to Drake University this past Wednesday, Paul really missed the mark when he answered a question on whether employers could fire LGBT workers just for being LGBT.
Part of his answer was:
“I really think the things you do in your house we could just leave those in your house, and they wouldn’t have to be part of the workplace to tell the truth.”
Wow… I didn’t know who you loved at home caused problems in the workplace. I guess as long as they are of the opposite sex, your work performance will be better. Who knew?
After the story came out, Paul received some serious backlash from the Human Rights Campaign. He also took a beating on Twitter. So it’s no surprise that the next day he was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer back-peddling and trying to spin his remarks.
Wolf starts off by making the point:
“So the criticism is that you’re not, you’re preventing these people from going to court, if you will, if they are fired, or terminated, or exploited, because of their sexual orientation.”
Paul responds by saying:
“You know I don’t think anybody should be fired for being gay. I do also though believe that your personal life should be personal, and shouldn’t affect anyone firing you. So I don’t think the decision whether to hire or fire you should be based on things from your personal life. So when I say that it should remain in your house, yeah, I don’t think it should be part of the decision making of the business. So I might have been able to word it better.”
Actually, he should have been able to word what he just said better. After all of that, he still didn’t explain himself. At least not at a common sense level, but with a little prodding from Wolf (pun intended), Paul went on to explain:
“Whether or not that should be a federal law, I think that these things should be decided at the state level. When our country was founded, we said that most criminal justice and most civil action would be performed at the local level. The federal government didn’t have anything to do with it. So I don’t think the federal government should weigh in on things like this. It should be decided state by state, and if states want to make that an action for cause, that’s fine. I do worry about a workplace though where every sort of classification of person then becomes something where, oh I lost my job, maybe I’ll sue because I also happen to be gay.”
So… if a state decides that it’s okay to fire someone for being gay, that’s fine. The federal government cannot step in. Also, what does, “every sort of classification of person” mean? Sorry the population is not all straight white males, Rand. Although, on a personal home level, you might like that. Lastly, why do they always go back to the, “when our country was founded” defense. When our country was founded they wore white wigs.
Wait… I may have stumbled upon something there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjjciWVPz-A
Featured image by CNN courtesy of YouGeekNews via YouTube screen capture, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
