The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century, banning whites-only lunch counters and similar discrimination in hiring, promotions, hotels and restaurants. Yet, in a recent editorial board interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul explained why he believes that this landmark law should not apply to private business owners:

INTERVIEWER: Would you have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

PAUL: I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that.

INTERVIEWER: But?

PAUL: You had to ask me the “but.” I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism. I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anybody from your restaurant—but, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I absolutely think there should be no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding, and that’s most of what I think the Civil Rights Act was about in my mind.

Watch it:

After adding that he is also a fan of Dr. Martin Luther King, Paul dug in deeper, explaining that he he believes that in a “free society,” private lunch counters must be allowed to refuse service to Dr. King because of his race:

INTERVIEWER: But under your philosophy, it would be okay for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?

PAUL: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part—and this is the hard part about believing in freedom—is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example—you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It’s the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.

For the record, here is an example of the “boorish people” that Paul thinks a free society must tolerate:

In an interview with NPR today, Paul was asked three times about his position on the Civil Rights Act, but each time he dodged giving a declarative answer. “A lot of things that were actually in the bill I’m actually in favor of,” said Paul. Hinting at what he doesn’t “favor,” Paul added that “a lot of things can be handled locally.”

Baptist minister and clinical psychologist George Rekers has devoted himself to “curing” homosexuality, co-founded the far-right Family Research Council, and “played a significant role in many of the ugliest assaults on gay people and their civil rights over the last three decades.” Most recently, this anti-gay zealot became infamous for getting caught at the Miami International Airport with a “rent boy.” The male escort, Jo-vanni Roman, said that he gave Rekers “nude ‘sexual’ massages” every day during their two-week trip to London and Madrid.

Since then, Rekers has been causing all sorts of awkwardness for the Republicans, who have heartily embraced him in the past. Rekers, for example, was Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s (R) star witness in a case arguing why same-sex couples are unfit to adopt children. Rekers may even be a problem in cases where he didn’t testify. Today, the New York Times reports on his role in the high-profile challenge to California’s marriage equality ban:

Dr. Rekers did not testify in that case, but his views, in the form of a declaration filed in a previous case, were cited in the documents prepared for trial by two men initially identified as expert witnesses. (Only one, David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values, testified.) The question of whether sexual orientation could be altered through therapy was also discussed extensively in court.

Charles J. Cooper, the attorney defending the marriage equality ban, told the Times that Rekers “has had no involvement in the Proposition 8 case.” However, ThinkProgress found at least four ties to the Prop. 8 trial:

1. Blankenhorn was the defendants’ star witness and was eviscerated on the stand by attorney David Boies, who was arguing against Prop. 8 for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Blakenhorn has claimed that he is “not familiar” with Rekers’ work and didn’t “cite anyone named ‘Dr. Rekers’” in his “expert testimony submitted to the court.” However, Blankenhorn did reference Rekers’ work in the bibliography of his “expert report” for the trial:

This Rekers declaration that Blankenhorn references has statements such as “The inherent structure of households with one or more homosexually behaving members deprives children of vitally needed positive contributions to child adjustment and to the child’s preparation for successful adulthood adjustment that are present in heterosexual homes.” (View it here.)

2. One of the witnesses arguing against Prop. 8 was Ryan Kendall, a gay man who was forced to undergo “reparative therapy” as a teenager to make him straight. He “was first sent to see a Christian therapist and then the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH),” and the experiences left him contemplating suicide. Rekers was on the board of NARTH during the Prop. 8 trial and only recently stepped down after the “rent boy” scandal broke.

3. Rekers is a member of the American College of Pediatricians (ACP), which submitted an amicus brief to Chief Judge Walker in the Prop. 8 trial. ACP is a sham, right-wing group. When “the American Academy of Pediatrics passed its policy statement supporting second-parent adoptions by lesbian and gay parents in 2002, a fringe group of approximately 60 of the AAP’s more than 60,000 members” broke off and formed ACP.

4. The Prop. 8 defense had a witness named George Robinson who was going to testify about how being gay is a choice, although he was eventually withdrawn. He had also based some of his expert report on Rekers’ Prop. 22 declaration.

Rekers also testified in a 2004 suit to restrict same-sex couples from fostering children in Arkansas. The judge, however, overturned the law and said that he found Rekers’ claims “extremely suspect.”

Citing Rand Paul’s victory in the GOP Kentucky Senate primary against establishment choice Trey Grayson last night, Neil Cavuto asked RNC Chairman Michael Steele today about “dysfunction in the Republican Party” as the GOP establishment clashes with the Tea Party. Steele denied tension, saying he told the Tea Party in Kentucky that “if we have a situation where your guy prevails, we’re backing that candidate, we’re very much looking to supporting Rand and if our guy prevails, we’d like the same support.”

Cavuto responded that Tea Partiers had told him that they view the GOP establishment negatively, leading Steele to reply, “I’m telling you as the national chairman of the party there’s no bad blood between the Republican National Committee and the Tea Parties.” Cavuto persisted, however, in claiming that there was tension between the “establishment” and the Tea Party. Steele responded by saying that he didn’t even know who the Republican establishment is, leading Cavuto to note that Steele is the establishment:

CAVUTO: Michael, the Tea Partiers didn’t like Senator Bennett.

STEELE: That’s fine.

CAVUTO: Fairly or not, they didn’t like him. The established Republican Party did.

STEELE: Ok, that may be. But wait a minute.

CAVUTO: I’m just saying that for you to say there is no angst between the two…

STEELE: Neil, don’t mix. Please stop.

CAVUTO: There clearly is.

STEELE: Please do not mix the Republican Party establishment, I don’t know who that is, by the way.

CAVUTO: You, you, you!

STEELE: With activists, I, no…

CAVUTO: You, you, you, you, you.

STEELE: Neil, have you been reading my press lately, I don’t think the last thing you could say about me is that I’m part of the establishment.

CAVUTO: Well, that’s true because everybody hates you. I’m kidding.

Watch it:

Steele hasn’t always been so confused about the fact that he is part of the Republican establishment. In fact, in an interview with Cavuto earlier this year, Steele explained how he was part of the establishment and not the Tea Party. “As I like to tell people — long before there was this big push on tea parties — if I wasn’t doing this job, I’d be out there with the tea partiers,” said Steele. Steele has also said that he is “the de facto leader of the Republican Party.”