A man who was scheduled to fly Tuesday night from New York City to Austin, Texas on the same plane as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) was bumped from the flight after giving the governor a piece of his mind on gay marriage.
A spokesman for Abbott, Matt Hirsch, told The Austin American-Statesman that the passenger approached the governor at John F. Kennedy International Airport and shook his hand before broaching the topic of same-sex marriage.
“I hope you [expletive] go to hell because of your stance on gay marriage,” the man said to Abbott, according to Hirsch.
“Other passengers seemed unnerved a little bit by it,” Hirsch told the newspaper.
The American-Statesman reported that Abbott’s security detail then asked the man, whom Port Authority police only identified as a 32-year-old, to back away from the governor. The man said, “I’m going to see you on the plane,” as he walked away, Hirsch told the newspaper.
But there was no chance for a second confrontation between the man and the governor. After Port Authority police officers ran the man’s name through several databases and judged that he made “no direct threats,” JetBlue security told the man that he would be bumped to a Wednesday morning flight, according to the report.
Before being elected governor last year, Abbott defended Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage as the state’s attorney general. Following last month’s landmark Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, he directed state agencies to protect Texans’ religious liberties.
