About 100 residents of this small Dillon County town showed up for a special meeting of the town council Thursday night, all with one subject on their mind: Crystal Moore’s firing from the police chief post by Mayor Earl Bullard. Bullard made it clear before the meeting that Moore’s firing wasn’t on the agenda, and he wasn’t going to talk about it. But that didn’t stop Councilwoman Lutherine Williams and other council members. When the official meeting adjourned, they simply moved it outside. “All of these citizens came out tonight to be heard,” Williams said after Bullard refused to hear from anyone on the Moore matter. “You did not have to be standing in corners and out in the hallway,” she said to the standing room-only audience, many of which were forced to listen to the meeting via loud speakers outside the town hall. Those who did make it inside had to show proof of residency.

“I would much rather have someone who drank and drank too much taking care of my child than I had somebody whose lifestyle is questionable around children, because that ain’t the damn way that they’re supposed to be,” Bullard says on the call. “I don’t agree with some of the lifestyles that I see portrayed and I don’t say anything because that’s the way they want to live. But I’m not going to let my child be around. I’m not going to let two women stand up there and hold hands and let my child be aware of it, and I’m not going to see them do it with two men neither. I’m not going to do it, because that ain’t the way the world works.”

Residents of a small South Carolina town turned out to support their police chief after she was apparently fired by the mayor because she is a lesbian.Local television was given a recording of the mayor denouncing Moore.Moore says that she is overwhelmed at the support.

Labels: bigotry, employment, gay cops, South Carolina