Carolina QuotesI'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.
Jesse Helms Carolinian
Source
In response to the nomination of Roberta Auchtenberg to be Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (The Washington Post, 1993-05-07)
- year
- 1993
Cite this record
“I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If y…” Jesse Helms. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-B3BBC4F389. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/b3bbc4f389
More from Jesse Helms
The Armed Services Committee may wish to explore the legal advisers' concerns that the draft of the international criminal court statute pending before the sixth committee of the United Nations could impact in an extremely negative way upon "the status of forces' agreements or the prosecution of war crimes." These are not just words, they have meaning and they have implications, a constitutional question. The Finance and Energy and Commerce Committees may be interested in the potentially devastating impact that this proposal may have on the cost to U.S. companies doing business overseas. The jurisdictional authority of such a court is expansive and its impact is unknown. We are flying blind by the seat of our britches. It should be excluded from this bill. It is totally unwise. It is dangerous to act precipitously on this provision, and I hope that my efforts to strike this provision will be supported by a majority of the Senate. I hope the public will require their Senators to explain why they oppose it or not.
Mr. President, before I conclude, I feel obliged to comment briefly on two amendments that I intend to offer, designed to assist U.S. citizens who have had their property confiscated--that is to say illegally stolen--by foreign governments receiving foreign aid from the taxpayers of the United States. The Senate passed one of these amendments 96 to 4. I stood down there during the vote and Senators came in and said, "good amendment" and all of the rest of it. The State Department, however, and other U.S. officials turned a deaf ear to U.S. citizens whose property had been unlawfully taken from them. Unfortunately, the Senate must again send a wakeup call to the U.S. State Department. That message must go to the countries abusing the rights of U.S. citizens, and those countries ought to be denied even one dime of foreign aid money until they cut this out.
During the past few weeks, I have talked by telephone on numerous occasions with a fine, Christian lady whose face and voice are familiar to most Americans. Her name is Anita Bryant. She has stood beside Billy Graham during his televised crusades. No doubt you have seen her also as she appeared on television commercials advertising Florida orange juice. She is a lovely person, deeply committed to Christianity. She is also a concerned American- concerned about the erosion of moral principles and indecency in all of the forms spreading out across America. She has warned that unless America returns to basic principles, our freedoms are in jeopardy. Not so long ago, she spoke out against America's growing tendency to give respectability to homosexuality. And that's where her troubles began.