South Carolina Republican State Senator Lee Bright had a meltdown over gay marriage during Monday’s session in the legislature. Although the senate was convened to discuss removal of the Confederate flag from the State Capitol grounds, Bright switched gears and railed against same-sex marriage.
In a rambling and angry diatribe the Senator lamented:
Members of the Senate, I heard our President sing a religious hymn and then Friday night I watched the White House be lit up in the abomination colors.
He then made a call for action:
It’s time for the church to rise up. It’s time for the state of South Carolina to rise up.
Our governor called us in to deal with the flag that sits out front. Let’s deal with the nation of sin that we face today. We talk about abortion but this gay marriage thing, I believe we will be one nation gone under. Like President Reagan said “If we’re not one nation under God, we will be one nation gone under.” And to sanctify deviant behavior from five judges… It’s time for us to make our stand. It’s time to make our stand and we’re not doing it. We can rally together and talk about a flag all we want but the Devil is taking control of this land and we’re not stopping him.
Bright’s heated fire and brimstone rhetoric hardly seems befitting a lawmaker, but he undoubtedly speaks for a number of conservatives in South Carolina that are more upset about marriage equality than they are about a self-styled white Neo-Confederate assassin gunning down nine African-Americans in a Charleston church.
Now in fairness, Bright is far enough on the fringe that when he sought the U.S. Senate nomination in 2014, he was easily trounced in the Republican primary by incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham. However, his radical Tea Party ideas have not hurt him in the primaries or general election races for his State Senate seat. Bright represents SD-12, a predominately white district situated between the cities of Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina.
Bright is one of the staunchest defenders of the Confederate flag in the South Carolina Senate. He is also fiercely anti-LGBT equality. Unfortunately for Mr. Bright, his antiquated political views are still mired in the politics of the early-20th century. Those views are losing their grip even in South Carolina. For that reason, it comes as no surprise that Senator Bright lost his grip on the Senate floor.
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