On Thursday night, Rand Paul tried softening the blow of statements he’d made at a campaign event on Wednesday, which came under considerable fire for clearly suggesting that anti-discrimination laws in the workplace weren’t necessary — and would only result in a lot of lawsuits:
“I think really the things you do in your house we could just leave those things in your house and they wouldn’t have to be part of the workplace to tell you the truth. These are very difficult decisions on what you decide will be employer’s decisions and not. And really isn’t so much about that question as it is about—it sets up a classification, or a class of people who can now sue. See what I mean? So what happens, it sets up a whole industry for people who want to sue… If you are gay there are plenty of places that will hire you.”
Related: Hillary Clinton skewers Rand Paul’s homophobic employment policy with single Tweet
However, speaking with Wolf Blitzer, his followup commentary managed to be almost entirely inchoate and yet somehow still offensive:
“I don’t think anybody should be fired for being gay. I do also, though, believe that your personal life should be personal and shouldn’t affect anyone firing you. So I don’t think the decision whether to hire or fire you should be based on things in your personal life. So when I say that it should remain in your house, yeah I don’t think it should be part of the decision-making of the business. So I might have been able to word it better, but I don’t think it should enter into the decision at all…”
Watch the whole stream-of-consciousness speech below:
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https://youtu.be/EsdZk9czcII
