At a hearing concerning domestic partner benefits, Republican Mecklenburg County, Virginia Commissioner Bill James took a slightly different tact on the issue: referring to gays as if they were vermin. James spoke of the effort to “de-infest” areas where gays “congregate.”
According to witnesses, Democrat Commissioner Vilma Leake gave an impassioned account of her son’s 1993 death to AIDS. After she spoke, James reportedly leaned over to her and asked, “Your son was a homo, really?”
James later said that he would not apologize for his remarks. He said “homo” is just slang and not meant to be insulting. He added “[p]eople can believe whatever they want, they can believe in the tooth fairy and legend of Atlantis. I don’t determine what I do based on what people think. I determine it based on what I did and what I did was I asked a question and that question doesn’t deserve or require an apology.”
