Alabama is back in the news for bad behavior. This time it’s it involves small-town Carbon Hill Mayor Mark Chambers, who has been forced to apologize for encouraging the murder of homosexuals, among others.

“We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights and socialists lecture us on economics.” Mayor Chambers posted on Facebook.

A Facebook friend wrote on the Mayor’s public page in response, “By giving the minority more rights than the majority. I hate to think the country my grandkids will live in unless somehow we change and I think that will take a revolution.”

Chambers reply: “The only way to change it would be to kill the problem out. I know it’s bad to say but without killing them out there’s no way to fix it.”

Located in upper Northwestern Alabama, Carbon Hill, with an estimated population of 2,021 is primarily known for two things, its multitude of Christian Churches, and now mayor since 2014, Mark Chambers.

When confronted with the above statements, Chambers at first denied the since-deleted post, which appeared one day before the start of Pride month. In a statement to Alabama’s WBRC, Fox 6News, Mayor Chambers said, “I don’t think I posted that. I think it’s somebody else’s post.” Upon being informed by WBRC’s reporter, Brittany Dionne, that it came from his direct account, WBRC saying, “Okay, well, we have some posts on a Facebook page that has your name and pictures of you with your family, so someone is using your identity on Facebook?” Mayor Chambers replied, “I don’t know.”

Rather than taking immediate responsibility, he told WBRC that immigrants are “ungrateful,” and “they’re taking over the country,” adding that we might have a civil war because of this. At some point, he also claimed he’d thought he was sending a private message, despite his settings being public.

Eventually, he apologized, in another since-deleted post that, “Although I believe my comment was taken out of context and was not targeting the LGBTQ community, I know that it was wrong to say anyone should be kill(ed).” Although stating in the post that he was making a “public apology,” it’s worth noting that the now-deleted post was set as friends only.

The mayor has since issued yet another apology for shaming his community and has offered to resign.

Carbon Hill City Councilmember Reverend Clarence Colbert told WBRC reporters that he and several other city leaders stand behind Chambers.

“Carbon Hill has never had a black police chief until they got mayor Chambers in office. He hired the first black police chief,” Colbert said. “Since he’s been here, we have increased our budget. We have given raises a couple of times to all of our employees.” “He’s apologized profusely and said he was sorry, and he would do whatever it takes, even if it meant stepping down,” Colbert said. “I told him, ‘please don’t step down’ because his leadership has brought the city as far as it has.”

Michael David Raso has worked as a writer, editor, and journalist for several different publications since graduating from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. If you like this piece, you can read more of his work here.