Republican State Senator Closely Tied to Anti-LGBT Law Reveals Its True Purpose

North Carolina State Senator Buck Newton on Monday addressed a crowd of HB2 supporters, urging them to continue fighting to keep the anti-LGBT law alive. He ended his speech by revealing the true purpose of HB2: “KeepÂ our state straight!,” Newton demanded.

At today's pro-HB2 rally Senator Buck Newton remarked that "we must fight to keep our state straight." #WeAreNotThis Posted by Equality NC on Monday, April 25, 2016

“Go home, tell your friends and family who had to work today what this is all about and how hard we must fight to keep our state straight,” Newton, a Republican running to be North Carolina’s next Attorney General, told fans.

“We all know that the folks that wave the rainbow flags and things like that are politically very upset about the way things are today,” he told the crowd earlier in his speech. “Theyâ€™re upsets about the way things have always been in this state. And they’re bound and determined to try to change it, whether itâ€™s by winning elections in the city of Charlotte on their city council or whether itâ€™s wining elections in November in the General Assembly or whether itâ€™s winning elections in November for our governor.”

Here’s more of Newton’s speech:

It’s stunning that the man who wants to be the top law enforcement agent effectively admits he wants LGBT people to not exist in the state.

He also compares transgender people to people “struggling with drugs.”

“Now it’s been said that there are many, many, many, many more sexual predators on the sex offender list than there are transgender people,” he said. “And we can all feel sympathy for folks who are having difficult times, because we all know folks that have a difficult time, whether folks are struggling with drugs, are struggling with their marriages, figuring out what it is that they’re supposed to be doing in life. We can all have sympathy for that. But that does not mean that we should expose our wives and our sisters and our children to the sexual predators in the bathrooms.”

Newton last year voted for a bill that lets magistratesÂ opt out of marrying same-sex couples. During debate he told his colleaguesÂ he was “disgusted” by comparisons between race and sexual orientation.Â “You’re born into your race. I don’t know about sexual orientation,” he said,Â adding, “People should not have to choose between their faith and their jobs.”

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Image via Facebook

Hat tip: Daily Kos, TPM

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