Mount Dora High School teacher Jerry Buell's hate speech wasn't confined to facebook: he was even worse in the classroom

I'm watching the news, eating dinner when the story about New York okaying same-sex unions came on and I almost threw up.

—Jerry Buell, facebook.com comment, July 25, 2011

After getting into hot water for his intemperate antigay facebook posting, Lake County, Florida's most publicly homophobic history teacher took to CNN recently with a lawyer from Liberty Counsel at his side.

Buell was asked the following question:

"I'm curious if you're worried or concerned at all about how your comments might be taken by a gay student who might be in your classroom."

His delusional answer:

"I explain to my students, my kids: You won't feel safer, you won't find a place you'll feel more respected, and you won't find a place you'll have more fun all day. I would challenge anybody to ask any one of my thousands of students if that has not proven to be true."

Now some of his gay former students are coming forward, and their take is quite different. Here's a blast from Buell's classroom past, circa 2003, courtesy of Equality Florida:

"I looked up when he said he supported gays in the military, stunned by the answer. He immediately followed that comment with the statement that we should then put them on the front lines, and pull back," Blaise said.

Kind of gives the lie to Buell's doubletalk about respecting his students when one of them was so shocked by the teacher's bareknuckled bigotry that he still remembered the remark eight years later, doesn't it?