Former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) announced his intention to get his old job back and challenge Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Think Progess reports.
Along with Smith's opposition to abortion rights, background checks on gun purchases, and support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, Smith is also a virulent homophobe.
TP writes up his anti-gay history:
As a Senator, Smith opposed LGBT equality at every opportunity — voting to keep anti-gay employment discrimination legal, opposing hate crimes protections, and refusing to even institute a non-discrimination policy for his own employees. Worse, he joined with Helms to oppose any federal funding for schools that “encourage homosexuality,” by teaching about LGBT families in an inclusive way. Calling such messages “trash,” he asked his colleagues in 1994 why federal tax dollars would be spent to “advocate and encourage the homosexual lifestyle in the curriculae of public schools in this country?” He proposed that “if a public school decides and the parents in that school district decide that this is appropriate in their school system–I cannot imagine why they would–but if they did or they do, fine. You just do not get any federal dollars.”
He also joined with Helms to propose special protections for the Boy Scouts of America's right to discriminate, warning “Rome died from a lot less than this. When you dilute your moral code to this extent, and if this keeps up, the obituary for America is going to be written.” He opposed confirmation of openly LGBT nominees, saying that sending Ambassador James Hormel to Luxembourg was “like sending Louis Farrakhan to Israel,” and that confirming Roberta Achtenberg as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development could lead to America becoming “a society cast off from our moral underpinnings and set adrift.”
