South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint truly outdid himself over the weekend. DeMint, a Republican, has long railed against the gays, whose marriages he thinks are "destructive" to society. DeMint went one step further this weekend, when, during a conservative church rally, he declared gay men and single women shouldn't teach. DeMint said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend, she shouldn't be in the classroom. "(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” he said. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion." A spokesman for DeMint told CNN today, the South Carolina Republican was merely stating his position that school boards should be in control of hiring decisions when the senator said that gays and unwed mothers should be banned from teaching. "Senator DeMint believes that hiring decisions at local schools are a local school board issue, not a federal issue. He was making a point about how the media attacks people for holding a moral opinion," the spokesman said. According to the Huffington Post, DeMint said something similar during the 2004 campaign and later retracted his statement, saying, "As my wife often reminds me, sometimes my heart disengages from my head and I say something I shouldn’t – and that’s what happened yesterday. I clearly said something as a dad that I just shouldn’t have said. And I apologize." DeMint is expected to easliy win re-election to the Senate next month.
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