Can a person who hates gays change his mind? This Republican Senate hopeful would like you to believe that.

U.S. Senate candidate Stephen Laffey said he regrets that he wrote columns denigrating gays when he was a college student.

The Republican candidate wrote them in 1983 and 1984 while studying at Bowdoin College in Maine. The articles appeared in a paper published by campus Republicans.

In one column, Laffey said he has never seen a happy homosexual.

"This is not to say there aren't any; I simply haven't seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet," he wrote. "All the homosexuals I've seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life."

In another column he wrote that pop music was turning the children of America into sissies, and criticized the singer Boy George, referring to him as "it."

"It wears girl's clothes and puts on makeup," he wrote. "When I hear it sing, 'Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,' I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs."

So can somebody who once wrote words filled with so much hate really have changed his mind? Or does he just want people to believe that so he can get elected?

We have no idea what is in the hearts of most of our politicians. They will say literally anything that they think will get them elected. I would certainly place more faith in something that was written before a candidate was seeking public office then something written or said afterward.

Once a homophobe, always a homophobe.