An Alabama congresswoman is threatening to reveal other legislators' extramarital affairs to lampoon their alleged commitments to "family values."
Rep. Patricia Todd (D) Is the state's only openly gay member of Congress, and said she is fed up with cheating legislators criticising gay marriage.
"I will not stand by and allow legislators to talk about 'family values' when they have affairs, and I know of many who are and have," she wrote on Facebook over the weekend, according to the TimesDaily.
"I will call our elected officials who want to hide in the closet out."
Alabama is in the middle of a war over their gay marriage ban, and a federal judge ruled Friday that the ban is unconstitutional. Many elected officials in the red state have spoken out in opposition to the ruling, but Rep. Todd said that the naysayers should choose their words carefully.
"If certain people come out and start espousing this rhetoric about family values, then I will say, 'Let's talk about family values, because here's what I heard,'" she wrote.
"I don't have direct knowledge, because obviously I'm not the other person involved in the affair. But one thing you would never hear about me is that I ever cheated on a partner or had an affair," said Todd.
The belief in marriage as a union between a man and a woman is often cited as a means of upholding biblical principles, but the congresswoman insisted that adulterers should not use that argument.
"One thing I'm pretty consistent on is I do not like hypocrites," she said. "If you can explain your position and you hold yourself to the same standard you want to hold me to, then fine.
"But you cannot go out there and smear my community by condemning us and somehow making us feel less than, and expect me to be quiet."
U.S. District Court Judge Callie Granade issued a two-week stay on her ruling, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has until February 9 to decide whether to continue the stay.
