Chambliss’s Office Investigating Whether Staffer Left ‘All Faggots Must Die’ Comment On LBGT Blog

By Ben Armbruster Yesterday, the LGBT rights blog Joe My God reported that a reader called “Jimmy” left a comment on a blog post about the the DADT cloture vote that said, “All faggots must die.” According to the blog’s author Joseph Jervis, the commenter’s IP address appeared “to resolve to the neighborhood of GOP U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ Atlanta office” and that the

internet service provider is “United States Senate.” Jervis later reported that a reader suggested that the comment may have also come from Sen. Johnny Isakson, Georgia’s other GOP senator, because their offices are in the same area.

Late yesterday afternoon, Jim Galloway at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution picked up on the story and “confirmed” with Chambliss’s office that it is investigating the matter:

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss confirmed Tuesday that he investigating whether one of his staffers left a threatening slur on an Internet discussion of the right of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.

“We have seen the allegations and are moving quickly to understand the facts. This office has not and will not tolerate any activity of the sort alleged,” Chambliss spokeswoman Bronwyn Lance Chester said. “Once we have ascertained whether these claims are true, we will take the appropriate steps.”

Galloway notes that “a spokeswoman for Isakson…said his staff quickly ascertained that the message did not originate with them.”

Jervis posted the IP address on his blog yesterday and asked readers to “get busy” finding its origin and said that it didn’t take long for them to come through. “Among the fields in which gay people are over-represented is the IT field,” he said.

TPM reports that “the Senate sergeant-at-arms, which administers the Senate’s IT systems, did not have a comment as of this morning.”

For his part, Chambliss voted against the defense authorization bill yesterday that would have lifted the military’s DADT policy.