’)First it was Joe Steffen, Governor Bob Ehrlich’s hand-picked hatchet man who instituted a partisan purge of the Maryland state government and then disappeared into the night. Now, Ehrlich has once again rubber-stamped a right wing nutcase and given him a government job… of course, it didn’t take long for a bigot eruption to occur.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday fired Robert J. Smith, his appointee on the Metro transit authority board, for referring to gay people as sexual deviants on a cable television show.
“Robert Smith’s comments were highly inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable,” Ehrlich (R) said in a statement less than five hours after the controversy erupted during a Metro board meeting. “They are in direct conflict to my administration’s commitment to inclusiveness, tolerance and opportunity.”
Smith acknowledged after the meeting that he had referred to homosexuals as “persons of sexual deviancy” during a political round-table discussion on a Montgomery County cable show that was shown on Sunday.
“Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant,” he said. “I’m a Roman Catholic.” Smith said his comments had been part of a discussion about a proposed ban on same-sex marriage. “The comments I make in public outside of my [Metro board job] I’m entitled to make,” he said. His personal beliefs, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with running trains and buses and have not affected my actions or decisions on this board.”
This is the Ehrlich pattern. Stuffing right wing zealots in the government, negotiating sweetheart energy deals with lobbyists… its just way out of tune with the beliefs of the vast majority of Marylanders.
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