Pam Bondi is pictured. | AP Photo

Pam Bondi. | AP Photo

Bondi says she's not being hypocritical toward LGBT community

TALLAHASSEE — State Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a television interview Tuesday that she is not being "hypocritical" in portraying herself as an advocate for the gay community after the Orlando terror attack even though she persisted in a protracted and unsuccessful legal fight to preserve Florida's constitutional ban on gay marriage.

"I talked to a lot of gay and lesbian people here who are not fans of yours and who thought you were being a hypocrite,” CNN host Anderson Cooper said during an interview with Bondi. “You said in court that gay people, simply by fighting for marriage equality, were trying to do harm to the people of Florida.”

In response, Bondi said she was simply upholding the constitution, saying the ban is "not a law."

"That was voted into the state constitution by the voters of Florida,” Bondi told Cooper. “That’s what I was defending … I never said I don’t like gay people."

In the wake of Sunday's attack inside a gay nightclub in Orlando, Bondi said, “Anyone who attacks our LGBT community, anyone who attacks anyone in our state, will be gone after with the full extent of the law.”

In the interview Tuesday, Cooper continued to press Bondi on whether her argument that gay marriage would do harm to the state would send the wrong message to people, and noted that Bondi’s office incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs as she continued fight gay marriage in the state, even after the ban had been struck down.

"Are you saying that you believe it would not do harm to Florida?” Cooper asked.

“Of course not,” Bondi replied. “I’ve never said that.

But her attorneys did write in a court filing that bears Bondi’s name that an injunction to block to the ban, effectively allowing gay marriage in the state, "would irreparably harm the State of Florida.”

While Bondi has said it was her duty to fight until the end, her legal approach wasn’t shared in 2014 by another Republican state attorney general, Tom Horne of Arizona, who said it was “unethical” to continue to fight for his state’s gay-marriage ban when it was clear it would be a lost cause. Like Bondi, Horne defended his state’s ban. But unlike her, he stopped after it was repeatedly ruled unconstitutional.

“Both the Federal District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled against us, and the United States Supreme Court has shown an unwillingness to accept review in the case of three other circuits in essentially identical circumstances,” Horne said in a written statement on Oct. 17, 2014. “Lawyers live under a rule called Rule 11, which provides that it is unethical for a lawyer to file a pleading for purposes of delay rather than to achieve a result,” Horne said. “The probability of persuading the 9th Circuit to reverse today’s decision is zero. The probability of the United States Supreme Court accepting review of the 9th circuit decision is also zero.”

Two months after Horne issued his statement, Bondi went the opposite direction. Her office petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up Florida’s gay-marriage ban after a federal court refused to temporarily block same-sex unions in Florida.

Cooper, who is openly gay, also pointed out that Bondi has never been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ causes.

“I have never really seen you talk about gays and lesbians,” Cooper said, noting that she has tweeted about national dog month, but “it is gay pride month and you’ve never even tweeted about gay pride month.”

“Actually, if you look at my website now we have hands clasped together, all different colored rainbow-hands,” Bondi responded.

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