Carbon Hill is a small city in the northwestern corner of Alabama. Although a normally quiet area of the state, the city is getting some unwanted attention lately, due to the hate-filled comments of its mayor, Mark Chambers.
First elected to his position in 2014, Chambers went on a Facebook rant on Friday, publishing a diatribe in which he called out “socialists,” supporters of abortion rights, and members of the LGBTQ community the day before Pride Month began.
“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,” Chambers wrote in all capital letters.
A friend of his responded to his post by suggesting it would “take a revolution” to change people’s minds in America toward his line of thinking. Chambers had a response to that as well.
“The only way to change it would be to kill the problem out,” he wrote, according to reporting from local television station WBRC. “I know it’s bad to say but without killing them out there’s no way to fix it.”
The station tried to reach out to Chambers to get his side of the story, after he had deleted the initial post. On Monday, in a phone interview with them, the mayor first tried denying it was his post at all. “I don’t think I posted that. I think it’s somebody else’s post,” Chambers said.
When WBRC pointed out it was his account, and asked if he believed he had been hacked, Chambers responded, “I don’t know.” He then hung up the phone, ending the interview abruptly.
But things didn’t end there. A few minutes later, Chambers called the station back, and ranted about immigrants this time, calling them “ungrateful” and claiming the country was in a state of civil war.
He also claimed his comments were about immigrants, and not targeting any groups that the original post mentioned.
“I never said anything about killing out gays or anything like that,” Chambers claimed.
He also said the use of the word “revolution” was taken out of context, and were about how “both sides…would be killed out” if anything like that were to happen, according to AL.com. Yet a simple look at what he had originally posted demonstrates that’s not the case at all.
Chambers also said that his Facebook profile wasn’t meant to be read by the public — yet his privacy settings, at the time of his initial hate-filled posting, were set to “public,” he later admitted. They have since been set to private.
On Tuesday, Chambers finally came out and apologized for his words, making another Facebook post saying he was remorseful. “I alone am responsible for the comment that was made,” he said.
Yet the mayor still maintained he believed his comments “were taken out of context,” and weren’t “targeting the LGBTQ community.”
According to the Progressive Secular Humanist Examiner, Chambers is a “pro-life” conservative Christian.
Featured image: WSFA12 News
