(Reuters) - The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado said on Friday it had accepted the resignation of a co-chair who came under criticism for a Facebook (O:FB) post that said people who insist on voting for Donald Trump should be told they will be shot.
Loring Wirbel, who served as co-chair of the Colorado Springs chapter of the ACLU, also compared Trump, the current Republican presidential frontrunner, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Wirbel's Facebook comments were reported by the conservative website "The Daily Caller" and caught the ire of Trump supporters and members of the Republican Party in Colorado.
"The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, 'This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day'," Wirbel wrote of Facebook, according to the Daily Caller.
"They're not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there's always force," the post read.
The comments could no longer be found on Wirbel's personal Facebook page.
Daniel Cole, executive director of the El Paso County Republican Party, called for Wirbel to be replaced at the ACLU, saying the comments were irresponsible and especially insensitive coming two weeks after of a gunman killed three people and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
"It's beyond belief that he would think it was acceptable to post something like that," Cole told the Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs.
Wirbel said the comments were not meant to be taken seriously.
"They are taking that stuff out of context. It's smear politics," he told the newspaper.
The ACLU said in a statement on Friday it had accepted Wirbel's resignation and did not condone the sentiments.
