— Gainesville Sun reports: “Detention officer fired for alleged KKK membership”
— “According to the Sheriff’s Office, the termination of Wayne Kerschner came after an internal investigation in which Kerschner said he had been a formal member of the organization since 2008 and became interested in it through his wife, Shanda Lynn Kerschner.”
— ” ‘It was jarring to find out that someone in our agency was involved with an insidious organization,’ Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell said Wednesday. ‘Termination was warranted. I want the action to send a message that this is offensive behavior and is not acceptable at all.’ ”
— “Kerschner is quoted in an internal affairs report as describing the KKK as ‘faith-based, it is more of a religion-based organization, more of a political-based organization, that their hopes are to increase membership to further the political goals of the group, to look out for the white race ….’ ”

— Miami Herald reports: “Kerschner reportedly told investigators that the KKK was a faith-based group and said he believed in the organization’s ideology.”

— AP reports: “Florida jail fires officer for being KKK member – He defended group as a faith-based organization”
— “A county jailer in Florida has been fired after telling investigators he was an officer of the Ku Klux Klan.”
— “An internal affairs report by the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office says Detention Officer Wayne Kerschner defended the KKK as a faith-based organization.”
— “Kerschner told investigators that he blogged on a KKK Web site, attended a rally in Tennessee and paid dues to the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He said his wife was also a member.”
— “Kerschner was fired Wednesday for violating a department ban on subversive or terrorist organizations. He had worked four years at the jail in Gainesville. A phone number for Kerschner could not be found Thursday.”
— “The investigation started after a tip from a sheriff’s deputy working on an FBI investigation.”

— The Tennessee-based white supremacist hate group, United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, claims “Our ideology is simple, self preservation and the advancement of the White Christian America”
— The hate group calls for “segregation of the races [or tribes ] as they were referred to in the Bible,” attacks and slurs Black Americans
— Tennessee-based white supremacist group seeks members “to play an active part in the preservation of the White race”… praising Robert E. Lee, attacking “race mixing” and “mongrelizing of the races,” attacking “queers,” and call the KKK a “white Christian resistance”
— The hate group’s motto is “Ku Klux Klan, bring hope to the white race!”

See also March 2009:
“When Supremacism Uses A Religious Disguise”

We urge those who hate their fellow human beings through racial and religious extremism to drop the hate from their heart, accept our shared universal human rights, and rejoin the brotherhood of humanity.