Bill O’Reilly has been campaigning against Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D) because he won’t allow a vote on a bill to “Jessica’s Law.” Jessica’s Law imposes excessive penalties on individuals who commit sexual abuse against children, and O’Reilly has repeatedly inferred a connection between the fact Ferrandino is openly gay and not “protecting the kids.” Earlier this week, he responded to criticism over this comparison by doubling down on it. On Tuesday’s broadcast, he finally admitted the connection doesn’t exist, but took no accountability for reinforcing it:

O’REILLY: I have to report the truth here. First truism, homosexuality has nothing to do with the crime of pedophilia. Second, everyone we report on is defined and that guy is proud of his circumstance and promotes it, so we reported it.

Watch it (via Equality Matters):

A “truism” is something so obviously true that it isn’t worth mentioning, and the supposed link between homosexuality and pedophilia hardly fits that description. It’s true that there’s no connection, but it has been made or inferred for decades. More importantly, O’Reilly brazenly made it himself without any subtlety to hide behind just seven months ago. He can’t just shrug it off like everybody knows better when he has a history of miseducating his viewers on the issue.

His admission is also compromised by his description of Ferrandino as having a “circumstance” that he “promotes.” Being gay is not a condition, nor can homosexuality be reinforced in anyone. Under the premise of a campaign to “protect the children,” O’Reilly is only continuing to reinforce stigma against gay people with this kind of rhetoric. If he actually supports civil unions as he claims, he has no grounds for demonizing others for doing the same.

Tonight, Denver Post Opinion Editor Curtis Hubbard, who criticized O’Reilly for his smear campaign against Ferrandino, will appear on his show to confront him in person. Maybe fourth time’s the charm for O’Reilly figuring out how to respect the inherent dignity of an elected official.

Photo Credit: Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post

The Denver Post commemorated yesterday’s passage of civil unions in Colorado’s House with a front-page picture of Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D) kissing his partner Greg Wertsch — complete with a bottle of formula on the desk that belongs to their foster child. Anticipating negative reactions from readers, the editors published a defense for running the picture, arguing that it “shows the truth, no matter how objectionable” [see update below]:

One of the missions as journalists is to take our readers where they can’t go, and the speaker’s office is definitely one of those places. Ferrandino, who is gay, has been fighting to get this bill passed for at least the last three years, and he spoke eloquently on the subject while the bill was being debated. So it made sense to get his perspective. [...]

We have received objections to our photographs of gay couples before, so we all knew there would likely be a negative reaction to running the picture of Ferrandino. The civil unions vote was historic for Colorado and celebrating it was not a surprise. That led one editor to note, “We have no issues showing a straight couple kissing on election night.”

Another detail that made the photo so compelling was the baby bottle on Ferrandino’s desk. It belongs to the foster child he and his partner have; given that the civil unions bill offered protections for children and families, it was another element that gave context.

There is a difference between a picture that people object to and an “objectionable” photo. It’s disappointing that the editorial board thought the decision was “difficult.” Indeed, the one editor’s observation is key: it’s not kissing that people object to — it’s homosexuality . What has proven to be one the most effective ways to shift people’s opinions on gay rights is knowing gay people and learning about their lives and their families. No number of objections changes the reality that the Speaker of the Colorado House is a gay man with a loving partner and child; and reporting on reality is never a difficult decision.

MP Louisa Wall

This week, the New Zealand Parliament had its second vote — the most crucial of three — and approved marriage equality with a vote of 77 to 40. Typically the third vote is just a formality, suggesting the country is about to become the 12th on the planet to allow the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. The first vote took place back in August, when equality advanced with a slightly wider margin of 80-40.

The bill’s sponsor, Labour MP Louisa Wall, implored the lawmakers to stand against the prejudice that LGBT people experience, and even quoted hip-hop artist Macklemore:

WALL: The agony and hardship that so many who bravely made submissions have had to face is unreasonable. But what’s totally unacceptable, is the state perpetuating that agony and hardship by not issuing marriage licences to loving, consenting and eligible non-heterosexual couples. [...]

“And I can’t change/ Even if I tried/ Even if I wanted to/ I can’t change…” I hope the House will give a message to all young people. You don’t have to change. You can be who you are and we, as a society, will value who you are.

Prime Minister John Key has promised his support for marriage equality and even participated in a mock gay wedding this past December. In addition, the youth wings of all eight political parties support the freedom to marry.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) opposes same-sex marriage, but he’s previously expressed some ambivalence about banning it at the federal level because of his interest in preserving states’ rights. At a press conference Tuesday, he offered a convoluted new solution for marriage equality that simply erases any mention of marriage from laws or provisions about benefits:

PAUL: I’m not going to change who I am or what I believe in. I am an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historical definition of marriage. That being said, I think contracts between adults — I’m not for limiting contracts between adults. In fact, if there are ways to make the tax code more neutral where it doesn’t mention the word marriage, then we don’t have to redefine what marriage is.

We just don’t have marriage in the tax code. If health benefits are a problem, why don’t we not define them by marriage? Why don’t we say, you have another adult who lives in the house, and a kid who lives in the house can be part of family coverage? Then you don’t have to redefine, and have people like myself, and people who live in the Southeastern part of the country, we don’t have to change our definition of what we think marriage is, but we allow contracts to occur so there is more ability to [make] the law neutral.

The premise of Paul’s plan conflates the government’s recognition of marriage with religion’s. Even in “the Southeastern part,” including his home state of Kentucky, various churches support marriage equality for same-sex couples. Given his disinterest in supporting same-sex couples — or even letting children learn that gay people exist — it’s unlikely he’ll attract a very large coalition to erase everybody’s marriages to allow for these random contracts. Even if he could, it would be incredibly easy to abuse such contracts, such as acquiring insurance benefits for a roommate who isn’t really considered “family.”

Moreover, Paul claimed this week that his epic filibuster was intended to defend young people, advocating for a more “tolerant” Republican Party because Millenials “simply have no desire to tell other people what to do or how to live.” Offering an untenable idea that impacts everybody to avoid taking an actually tolerant position falls far short of this principle.

Illinois Rep. Jeanne Ives (R)

The Illinois House of Representatives could vote on same-sex marriage any day now, but it’s unclear if the bill has the votes to pass yet. Marriage equality sponsor Rep. Greg Harris (D) describes the rhetoric as “getting very heated,” and one lawmaker proved that on a radio interview with the Catholic Conference of Illinois. Rep. Jeanne Ives (R) expressed her disappointment that she had to deal with same-sex marriage because “it’s a disordered relationship” and she described gays as trying to “weasel their way into acceptability” and their children as “objects of desire”:

IVES: I didn’t go down there to talk about same-sex marriage… They’re trying to redefine marriage. It’s a completely disordered relationship and when you have a disordered relationship, you don’t ever get order out of that. So I’m more than happy to take a “No” vote on the issue of homosexual marriage. [...]

What they’re trying to do is not just redefine marriage, they’re trying to redefine society. They’re trying to weasel their way into acceptability so that they can then start to push their agenda down into the schools, because this gives them some sort of legitimacy. And we can’t allow that to happen… It’s the natural right of the child to be with both parents, either in an adoptive nature or in a biological nature. To not have a mother and a father is really a disordered state for a child to grow up in and it really makes that child an object of desire rather than the result of a matrimony.

Listen to it (via Jeremy Hooper):

It seems unlikely given her vitriolic comments that Ives has ever met a single same-sex family, which at least gives her the excuse of ignorance about how little she knows about gay people. If she has met such families and seen how loving and supportive they can be, then her comments are nothing short of bigoted.

Documents revealed earlier this week provided extensive evidence that Mark Regnerus’s infamous “New Family Structures Study,” which claimed that same-sex parenting was inferior to the parenting of married opposite-sex couples, was rigged from the start. The conservatives funding the study had clear intentions about what they wanted it to show, and the data were manipulated to produce that result. Even though every group opposed to LGBT equality has boasted the study since before it was even published, Regnerus has always claimed that they had no influence. After months of criticism, Regnerus even admitted the study was not about gay parenting, but apparently, he finds these groups to be good company.

Regnerus has now agreed to speak at the National Organization for Marriage’s conference for college students this summer. This is the same conference that promotes anti-gay myths such as the idea that same-sex relationships are “inherently unstable,” lesbian relationships fail because they “get on the same menstrual cycle,” and ex-gay therapy is important because homosexuality is “self-degrading.” One of its speakers is Robert Gagnon, an advocate of ex-gay therapy who recently compared high school gay-straight alliances to the KKK. By agreeing to keep company with these anti-science, anti-gay individuals, Regnerus is cementing a relationship he claims never existed.

It’s unclear what Regnerus has to gain from continuing to allow his research to be abused in this way. He may very well have some interesting results in the massive data set he collected; unfortunately, none of it has anything conclusive to say about committed same-sex couples raising children. Perhaps he feels his reputation has already been tarnished enough in the year since “the Regnerus study” was published that he has nothing left to lose. At any rate, by continuing to peddle his sham study in cooperation with those opposing equality, he abandons any hope of scientific redemption.