During his re-election bid this past November, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said that he supported the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and expressed concern about “changing the accommodations for troops if the policy changed.” But following the Pentagon’s review of the ban and the testimony of military leadership, Burr ultimately voted for final passage of repeal, even as he remained worried about lifting the measure during a period of war. “I feel that this policy is outdated and repeal is inevitable,” he said in a statement. “However, I remain convinced that the timing of this change is wrong, and making such a shift in policy at a time when we have troops deployed in active combat areas does not take into consideration the seriousness of the situation on the ground.”

Burr’s vote took repeal advocates and his conservative constituents by surprise. Qnotes, a North Carolina based newspaper, is reporting that the harshest remarks came from Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill James, who compared gay people to “sexual predators” and warned that Burr will pay a price for his vote:

“Homosexuals are sexual predators,” James wrote in one email from a string of several between county board members, Roberts and County Manager Harry Jones, and provided by James to qnotes. “Allowing homosexuals to serve in the US military with the endorsement of the Mecklenburg County Commission ignores a host of serious problems related to maintaining US military readiness and effectiveness not the least of which is the current Democrat plan to allow homosexuals (male and female) to share showers with those they are attracted to.”

James added, “The US Government would not allow Hetero men and women to share showers and other personal facilities yet the leading homosexual in Congress (Barney Frank) thinks it is OK for homosexuals to do so allowing enlisted men and women to fall prey to higher ranking or more powerful homosexuals who ogle them (or worse).” [...]

“I suspect Richard Burr will pay a high electoral price for his actions but whether it boots him from office next time is unknown,” James wrote. “I know I won’t be supporting him even if he does have an R after his name.”

This isn’t the first time James has relied on homophobic slurs, Qnotes reports: “He often uses derogatory language or slurs to describe LGBT people in debates or communication with fellow public officials and constituents. During debate last December on domestic partner benefits for county employees, James leaned over to his Democratic colleague, Vilma Leake, and called her son a ‘homo.’ Leake’s son died from AIDS in the 1990s.”

But while conservatives in North Carolina are only rhetorically condemning repeal, social activists in Virginia — whose two Democratic Senators also supported lifting the ban — are proposing a bill that would ban gays from serving in the Virginia National Guard. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R), commander in chief of the Guard, still supports DADT but said that the proposal is unconstitutional, since the “National Guard should follow the same rules as the rest of the military.”

During tonight’s North Carolina senate debate, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said he was against changing the 14th amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship, but said “it is important for the courts to determine” if the “founders” intended to allow for the practice:

BURR ON THE 14th: But I think when you have a debate in the country and that issue is raised, then it’s important for us to have that arbitrator, the courts to come in and tell us did our founders, when they wrote the 14th, did they have something else envisioned?

But the opposite should happen to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Burr insisted. That policy should be taken out of the courts and left to Congress. He didn’t know if being gay was a choice but worried that repealing the policy would require the military to change “the accommodations for troops”:

BURR ON DADT: Now personally I don’t see a reason to reverse it. But that’s a personal opinion. I think the country should have a debate. And what we should do is we should wait until the Department of Defense has gotten back the survey of those individuals who serve…. But I’m confident of this—that this is the wrong time to change this policy. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops deployed. We don’t yet know what we might have to do, from a standpoint of changing the accommodations for troops if the policy changed.

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As Pam Spaulding points out, Burr’s concern about “soap dropping in the shower,” so to speak, is unfounded. American soldiers are already showering alongside gay troops and so are the foreign troops who serve alongside openly gay servicemembers. None of our 25 allies that allow open service segregate troops on the basis of sexual orientation. As Larry Korb argues in this report, “the militaries of Great Britain, Canada, and Israel amply demonstrate that lifting the ban on openly gay service will not require the U.S. military to provide separate housing, shower, or other common-use facilities for gay and lesbian service members.” In fact, even General Carl Mundy, commandant of the Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995 and an opponent of a repeal, has predicted that segregating the forces “would be absolutely disastrous in the armed forces. … It would destroy any sense of cohesion or teamwork or good order and discipline.”

On the topic of health care, Burr said that he supported provisions that ban insurance companies from denying coverage to applicants with pre-existing conditions and close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole, but insisted that the Affordable Care Act must still be repealed.

“Actually, Judy, those provisions are acceptable to me and most Republicans and most Americans,” he said. “I think it’s important to realize we could have the elimination of pre-existing conditions tomorrow. We could have the elimination of lifetime caps tomorrow. We could begin to close the doughnut hole tomorrow. But you can’t fix the current health care bill that the president passed. And the truth is it doesn’t close the doughnut hole.”