DeMint succeeds in getting pro-gay ad pulled from SC television station

Unbelievable:

U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint’s attorney has succeeded in getting one Charleston media outlet to pull an ad that attacked DeMint’s eight-year-old position against gays teaching in public schools.

Warren Redman-Gress, executive director of the Alliance for Full Acceptance, said the story has received national attention in the gay and lesbian community since it first was reported this week.

“People just can’t believe one person can stop an advocacy campaign just because he doesn’t like the fact he was quoted in it,” he said.

The ad begins: “What if you saw this headline: Senator Jim DeMint: Jews Should Not Teach Public School. You wouldn’t tolerate such blatant prejudice and persecution. Substitute the word ‘gay’ and the reality is, you do.”

DeMint’s Washington attorney, Cleta Mitchell, had asked Charleston area televisions stations to pull the ad.

WCBD Channel 2 had asked the alliance to edit the ad by including a disclaimer clarifying that the first headline with the word “Jews” in it was not a real headline. A similar disclaimer appears under the second headline clarifying that it’s real.

WCBD station manager Rick Lipps said he made the request to eliminate any confusion, not in reaction to political pressure.

AFFA declined to edit the ad, so WCBD pulled it. In response, AFFA declined to let the station air its two less controversial ads.

In an email from Mitchell to a local television station, Mitchell claimed the ad portrayed DeMint, R-S.C., as anti-Semitic, though Charleston’s Jewish community has raised no concerns along that line.

Mitchell declined to comment, saying, “I just can’t talk about the work I do for my clients.” DeMint’s staff also declined comment, but Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he found the ad “incredibly offensive and unfair to Senator DeMint.”

Brooks called DeMint “a great friend of the Jewish community.”

During his 2004 Senate bid, DeMint said he didn’t think gays should teach in public school — a remark reportedly widely around the state, and the ad was designed to show how the public still accepts discrimination against gays and lesbians, Redman-Gress said.

It's ridiculous to even ponder the notion that anyone looking at the ad would think that DeMint was anti-Semitic.

Seems to me that the claim the DeMint people are making is bogus. And in the case of one station, the bogus complaint has succeeded:

You can view all of the ads at  www.affa-sc.org/imagine
 
You can also donate to AFFA at http://www.affa-sc.org/affa/donate.htm