Insisting “there is no hate or bigotry intended,” Barnegat, New Jersey Mayor Alfonso Cirulli on Tuesday called the LGBTQ community “an affront to almighty God” during a public meeting of the Township Committee, as he blasted a new state law that requires schools to include in their curriculums the social, political, and economic contributions LGBTQ people have made to society, as the Asbury Park Press reports.
Mayor Cirulli, who says he is a retired educator, warned of what he labeled the “serious psycologic affects” [sic] to adolescents and young children the impending LGBT curriculum will have. He did not detail what those would be, but said they would have “serious consequences.”
Cirulli says kids always get picked on, “for being overweight, ethnic, racial, or whatever their problems are,” as he wrongly claimed students are protected by federal law, and “all the schools do a fantastic job” of protecting at-risk students.
“We’ve crossed over the line into absurdity,” by passing a law that requires students to learn about LGBTQ people, he said, in an angered tone. And he said is fulfilling his duty to “protect” township residents by railing against the state law.
Mayor Cirulli told the committee that the new LGBTQ education law is so “serious” that lawmakers must ‘reverse” it, or residents must “vote them out.”
Ironically, he told the council members, “no group has a right to force others to comply with their beliefs, deprive them of their First Amendment rights, and strip them of their parents of how to morally raise their children.”
The mayor, who spoke uninterrupted, expressed his outrage that parents are not allowed, he says, to opt out their children from being taught the curriculum.
“What does a person’s sexual preference have to do with anything, and who’s business is it anyway?” Cirulli, clearly having no idea what is is to be LGBTQ, demanded to know. “Hw would anyone know another person’s sexual preference unless that person professes it, and what is his or her motive for professing it?”
“Sexual preference is a mindset,” Cirulli continued, again, without interruption. “Don’t confuse this with racial or ethnic discrimination. There is no comparison.”
The full video can be watched on the Barnegat Township website.
