ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) — The chairman of the South Carolina Secessionist Party says the group is dissolving.

The Anderson Independent Mail reported Friday that chairman James Bessenger says “the organization was taking a turn I didn’t want it to take.” More specifically, he says that the people genuinely interested in history were being outnumbered by “blatant and racist homophobes.”

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The group is responsible for at least two Confederate flag displays in Clemson since September. But he says the membership fractured before the move of a Confederate flag to the state Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum this month.

A senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, Keegan Hankes, says the group was relatively minor in the larger Confederate movement.

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Information from: Anderson Independent-Mail, http://www.andersonsc.com