Anti-gay Todd Akin loses Missouri senate race | Gay Star News
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Anti-gay Todd Akin loses Missouri senate race
Controversial Republican who said women rarely get pregnant from ‘legitimate rape’ loses election
07 November 2012 | By Anna Leach
Tea-Party-backed Todd Akin loses election for Senator of Missouri
Anti-gay and anti-abortion congressman Todd Akin has lost his bid to become Senator of Missouri.
Democrat incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill defeated Akin’s attempt to be elected in the mid-western state.
When asked if women who are raped should be allowed to have abortions during a radio interview in August, Akin said victims of what he called ‘legitimate rape’ rarely get pregnant. He apologized for the comments afterwards saying that he ‘misspoke’.
Akin also has an anti-gay rights record. He voted against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and tried to create a ‘conscience protection clause’ for those in the military who objected to it.
And when the president announced his support for same-sex marriage, Akin said ‘the Obama administration has once again revealed its unquenchable desire to tear down the traditional family unit brick by brick’, Advocate reports.
Senator McCaskill was the first female senator for Missouri when she was elected in 2006. She stopped short of supporting President Obama’s position on gay marriage in May but a spokesperson said she opposes discrimination against gays and lesbians.
McCaskill won a clear victory with 53% of the vote to Akin’s 41%. ’Mom: This one’s for you,’ she said in her speech, remembering her mother who died last week.
‘I don’t think people were voting for McCaskill, they were voting against Akin – or didn’t vote at all in protest,’ said Mary Simon, a Republican full-time mother in Missouri said to local newspaper St Louis Today.
At the time of publishing, the Democrats held on to 49 Senate seats and gained one, the Republicans held on to 44 seats and lost two, one seat remained independent and six seats were still to be announced.
Akin recently posted a message on his Facebook page saying: