Keynote speaker for Boone County Republicans “referred to homosexuality as a mental illness”
Rep. Kip Kendrick today demanded that his colleagues unequivocally condemn and repudiate the bigoted statements from the keynote speaker at a Republican campaign event in Columbia Thursday night.
The Columbia Missourian reports that Senator Ed Emery “referred to homosexuality as a mental illness” and received “applause from the crowd” during his speech.
Kendrick calls on his colleagues to condemn these bigoted and misguided statements in no uncertain terms:
“This is outrageous and extreme. And frankly, I’m angry that legislative colleagues would share the stage with Republicans spewing this sort of anti-LGBT hate speech, and not take the opportunity to correct it. It’s 2016–our elected leaders should be focused on what matters: creating jobs, attracting talent to our state and fully funding our local schools and universities, not attacking their fellow Missourians. Claiming LGBT families are afflicted with mental illness is not acceptable. And to blame ‘our schools for producing socialists, collectivists and gender confusion’ shows disdain for public education by these elected officials.”
Contemporaneous social media coverage of the event shows that Boone County Republican candidates spoke after Sen. Emery, and chose not to distance themselves from his anti-gay hate speech in any way.
