Conservative quotables

Georgia GOP Chair Sue “Free Ride” Everhart isn’t the only Republican in the state to spout off ridiculous nonsense about LGBT people. We hesitate to post this list today, lest you think these quotes are an April Fool’s Day joke. But no, Georgia conservatives actually said all of these outrageously offensive, painfully stupid things about gay people.

Here are the five of the dumbest things prominent Georgia conservatives have publicly said about LGBT issues, culled just from the last three years of GA Voice coverage.

The Marietta Daily Journal deserves credit for first publishing several of these, a dubious honor for the city in Cobb County, which approved the infamous 1993 resolution declaring homosexuality incompatible with community standards — prompting protests that ultimately cost Cobb the chance to host events in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Georgia Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Everhart (March 29, 2013)

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Telling the Marietta Daily Journal about the fraud that will result from allowing same-sex couples to marry:

“Lord, I’m going to get in trouble over this, but it is not natural for two women or two men to be married. If it was natural they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship. … I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

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Tanya Ditty, state director for the anti-gay Concerned Women for America (Feb. 21, 2012)

Testifying before a committee of the Georgia General Assembly against a bill to protect state employees from job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity:

“What’s going to protect our children if a pedophiliac comes in and gets a teaching job, is a bus driver, is a custodian? And they could be people that just want to prey on children and they would be protected by this law.”

She also stated that “sexual orientation” includes pedophilia, transsexuality, zoophilia and necrophilia and that “we do not believe the government should have a special protected minority class.”

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Marietta Daily Journal columnist Dick Yarbrough (July 13, 2011)

Mocking a California law that requires schools to acknowledge LGBT contributions in history:

“We have a lot of pride in Georgia’s history and the last thing we need to know is that some guy we named a county for used to run around at night in hoop skirts.”

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Ga. Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-43)Rep. Bobby Franklin (Feb. 7, 2011)

Pontificating in an interview with the Marietta Daily Journal about why he opposed repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

“The Bible says [homosexuality is] a capital offense. You want someone with unrepentant criminal behavior? And it’s not just that, neither should adulterers, neither should thieves, neither should a lot of things. The church is full of sinners, but we’re told in 1st Corinthians it rattled off the homosexual, the adulterer, the thief, the liar, and such were some of you, but you’ve been washed, you’ve been justified and so forth. It’s not what you were. You’re not punishing a thought. But do you want an unrepentant drug dealer in the military? Same thing.”

And then he followed up in an interview with GA Voice with this gem:

“I can not and I will not apologize for making references to what God has said in His Word. But I do find it interesting that fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers and swindlers have not demanded an apology.”

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Former Secretary of State and GOP gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel (July 14, 2010)

Explaining to WXIA’s Doug Richards why she would “absolutely” consider a law banning gay adoptions:

“I think that for a child to be in a household — in a family in a household with a situation where the parents are not married, as in one man and one woman, is not the best household for a child.”

This is made even richer by the fact that Handel openly pandered for gay votes, including supporting domestic partner benefits, during her Fulton County Commission races.

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