NASHVILLE (AP) - The board of education in Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield's hometown in upstate New York won't remove the Knoxville Republican from its hall of fame over complaints about his comments about gays and AIDS.

The Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin reports (http://press.sn/LbG9cf) that one woman shouted "Cowards!" after the board's president, Kim Myers, read a statement this week to announce Campfield's portrait would remain hanging on Vestal High School's Hall of Fame along with other prominent graduates.

"We believe and we teach the rights of all derived from our country's First Amendment freedom of speech," said Myers.

Campfield earlier this year told a satellite radio host that HIV and AIDS originated from a man having sex with a monkey and that it was nearly "impossible" for AIDS to be contracted through heterosexual sex. He also sponsored a failed effort to ban the teaching of gay issues in Tennessee public sc hools.

"If I as a teacher spewed his homophobic rhetoric, I would be fired on the spot," said John Perricone, who graduated from Vestal in 1977. "If the students of your school made the comments, they would likely be suspended."

Campfield was first elected to the Tennessee House in 2004, and to the Senate in 2010. The white lawmaker unsuccessfully tried to join the Legislature's Black Caucus in 2005, claiming the group was breaking federal law through racial discrimination.

Campfield was sued for libel for falsely stating on his blog in in 2008 that a Democratic candidate had a criminal record. The case is still pending. He has also drawn attention to himself by breaking stadium rules at a University of Tennessee football game by wearing a Mexican wrestling mask, and by parking his car on the sidewalk outside the Capitol when he arrived late for a vote.

Up to three alumni are inducted into Vestal High School's hall of fame each year. Campfield, a 1986 graduate, was added in 2008.

"I'm disgusted that a person like Campfield would be considered a shining star," junior Connor Henderson told the board.

In a brief e-mail to the Press & Sun-Bulletin, Campfield said that opponents to his membership in the school's hall of fame "are welcome to their point of view." He stood by his views on gays and lesbians.

"While I do not hate them I do not support sodomy," he wrote. "The homosexual lifestyle is dangerous and deadly."