On Tuesday evening, Bill O’Reilly finally admitted that “homosexuality has nothing to do with the crime of pedophilia” despite his history of making such connections himself. It seems the admission was too good to be true.

He’s been campaigning against Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D) for the lawmaker’s opposition to “Jessica’s Law,” which imposes excessive sentences (mandatory 25 years) for the crime of sexual abuse of minors, but he has repeatedly implied connections between Ferrandino’s sexuality and his opposition to “protecting kids.” Denver Post Opinion Editor Curtis Hubbard was among the most prominent critics of these tactics, and Wednesday night he appeared on O’Reilly’s show so that O’Reilly would have a chance to yell at him.

O’Reilly once again refused to take any accountability for the connection and proceeded to call Hubbard a “ridiculous… smear merchant” and referred to his “vile little columm” as ”libelous speculation”:

HUBBARD: What does his sexuality have to do with his opposition [to Jessica's Law]? [...]

O’REILLY: I described Ferrandino to the audience because the audience doesn’t know who the heck he is, and I did it in the context of what his priorities are. His priorities are civil unions… and legalizing marijuana, and he’s a gay marriage proponent, as you know. [...]

HUBBARD: But Bill, you didn’t introduce them as his priorities… What you specifically did was you asked your guest why he opposed Jessica’s Law, and then you used his sexuality and his support for gay marriage as rationale for why he would oppose Jessica’s Law. [...]

O’REILLY: Oh no I didn’t. I didn’t say anything of the kind. I described who he was — who he says he is — alright? And that’s it. I made no correlation between him being “openly gay” and opposing Jessica’s Law.

Watch it:

Unfortunately, the truth doesn’t support O’Reilly’s revisionist history. His guest when this campaign began, Colorado Rep. Libby Szabo (R), claimed that “the perpetrators hold more credence with [Ferrandino] than the child victims do.” O’Reilly and ambush-reporter Jesse Watters the continued to attack him for “not protecting the kids from sexual predators.” On another episode, O’Reilly continued to defend juxtaposing the issues, claiming Ferrandino is passionate about only a few things, and the kids aren’t one of them. He’s now arguing that he just meant Ferrandino was defending the “trial lawyers,” which he’s never said before and which also makes no sense.

Hubbard likely didn’t expect a very fair conversation, but all he had to do is show up and let O’Reilly spout. There was good reason to doubt the sincerity of his admission earlier this week — the last thing he would ever do is actually admit he was wrong.

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.

Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly has led a campaign of smear and harassment in recent weeks against Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D) because of his belief that Ferrandino is protecting child molesters by opposing “Jessica’s Law.” Jessica’s Laws impose excessive mandatory sentences for child sexual abuse, but Colorado already has tough laws and neither the law enforcement community nor victims’ advocate groups support the proposed change. After suggesting Ferrandino was protecting somebody because he was gay, O’Reilly then sent a reporter to harass him on the street while he was walking his dog.

Numerous mainstream outlets, including the Denver Post, have criticized O’Reilly for saying “gay” with the expectation that his audience understand that to mean “pervert-pedophile.” On Monday, after once again laughing that Ferrandino “looked like a complete fool” when he was ambushed on the street, O’Reilly explained that referencing the Speaker’s sexual orientation was important context because people don’t know who he is:

O’REILLY: We described the speaker as “openly gay” because Americans don’t know who he is and that description is used in almost every article ever written about him. And the reason we brought up civil unions is because Ferrandino objected to that vote being sabotaged by Republicans a few years ago, then he turned around and used the same technique to table Jessica’s Law. [...]

It matters that he is openly gay because he did the same thing to Jessica’s Law that he objected to on the civil unions situation… You have to basically get behind the motivation of the man, and his motivation is very narrow. He’s got only a couple of things he wants to do in there that he feels passionate about, but the kids apparently he doesn’t feel passionately about because he sabotaged it.

Watch it (HT: Equality Matters):

O’Reilly is still arguing that being gay and not protecting kids are somehow connected. Perhaps in his mind, he still conflates supporting civil unions with being gay, but of course he also admits to supporting civil unions himself. There’s no explanation for constantly inferring that Ferrandino’s sexual orientation is relevant to his other actions except to reinforce mythical associations between homosexuality and pedophilia. This is not a new tactic for O’Reilly either; just last summer he blatantly defended making such connections in defense of hate groups that do the same.
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As expected, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly is continuing his smear campaign against Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D), who is openly gay, because of his opposition to instituting “Jessica’s Law,” which imposes excessive mandatory sentences for first-time offenders of child molesters. As ThinkProgress reported this weekend, Colorado already has harsh sentencing for sex offenders and nobody — not even the law enforcement community or victims’ advocates groups — supports changing the laws. But that hasn’t stopped O’Reilly from pursuing his campaign against Ferrandino, who he plans to hold “personally responsible” for the bill’s defeat and for “protecting” perpetrators.

Last night, O’Reilly aired an interview featuring reporter Jesse Watters confronting Ferrandino on the street while he was walking his dog, accusing him of “not protecting the kids from sexual predators.” Ferrandino barely had an opportunity to speak as Watters launched a barrage of various cases in which molesters supposedly did not receive tough enough sentences:

WATTERS: You’re not protecting the kids from sexual predators in passing Jessica’s law. Why is that?

FERRANDINO: Well, no DA’s. The DA has actually opposed Jessica’s law. So have victim rights groups in Colorado. In 2009, the DA has come out in opposition to the bill. They haven’t supported it still. We have very strong laws.

WATTERS: You actually don’t have strong laws because let me give you a few examples. 800 times a guy just sexually assaulted a seventh grader and just got one year of work release. Ok? Another guy.

FERRANDINO: I can’t speak —

WATTERS: Another guy molested  —

FERRANDINO: Excuse me.

Before the exchange abruptly ended, Ferrandino managed to explain that Colorado’s laws “are tougher than Jessica’s laws” and that “we know what’s in Colorado’s best interest,” but Watters was not particularly interested in letting him make his case. If he ever did, it didn’t make it into the clip O’Reilly aired. In the discussion afterward, O’Reilly once again described Ferrandino as “a big gay marriage guy… big marijuana legalizer.” Watch it:

It’s hard to justify anything about this “campaign” of O’Reilly’s as journalism. It seems increasingly apparent that he is simply manipulating the fact that Ferrandino is gay to prey on viewers’ fears that the Speaker is thus somehow more likely to be endangering children.

Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is targeting the first openly-gay House Speaker in Colorado, Mark Ferrandino, for opposing a bill instituting mandatory sentences for sexual predators who target kids, implying that the Speaker is protecting child rapists and stonewalling the measure to exert retribution for the GOP’s decision to block a civil unions bill.

The outburst came after the so-called Jessica’s Law — named after 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford who was sexually assaulted and buried alive by a man convicted of exposing himself to a 5-year-old girl — was sent to committee and rejected in a party-line vote this February. The measure “would have imposed a mandatory sentence of at least 25 years before parole on an offender who commits a sexual assault against a child.”

During an interview with Rep. Libby Szabo (R) — the sponsor of Jessica’s law Colorado — in February, the two speculated that since Ferrandino is gay, he may be hiding something or protecting someone by failing to support the legislation:

O’REILLY: Now this Ferrandino I understand he is the — what, the first openly gay House Speaker in Colorado. He was a fervent gay marriage person. He objected when gay marriage was first tabled because they sent it into the same committee to kill it that he sent Jessica’s law in. All that true so far of this guy?

SZABO: So far you’re correct.

O’REILLY: All right. So this guy doesn’t want tougher mandatory sentences. Have you talked to him about it? Has he said anything to the press about why not?

SZABO: You know, I don’t know that the press in Colorado, they covered this issue very well on — on my side of the issue and on Mr. Lunsford’s side of the issue. But I don’t believe he was willing to speak to them because obviously he’s protecting somebody. Obviously the victims hold more credence with him — I mean not the victim— the perpetrators hold more credence with him than the child victims do.

In reality, the measure had very little support from the law enforcement community or victims’ advocates in Colorado. The Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and Colorado Office of the Public Defender all argued that Jessica’s Law wasn’t necessary and Republicans themselves failed to introduce it when they had the majority.

Instead, the party has used it as a political weapon to attack Democrats, as they did in the 2010 election after a similar measure failed in 2009. The bill has failed four times now in Colorado.

Colorado already imposes mandatory sentencing for crimes of violence and the courts “have the discretion of meting out very long sentences for sex offenders. The State Public Defender’s office said that Colorado currently has the “harshest sex offender (sentencing structures) in the country,” and that “sex offenders in Colorado already go through rigorous hoops before they’re able to receive an early release from their sentences.” Not a single Coloradan testified in favor of the measure.
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The Massachusetts Department of Education recently issued a comprehensive set of guidelines for respecting transgender youth in schools, including using the names and pronouns they’ve chosen for themselves and allowing them to use the appropriate restrooms. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is not happy about it, and in an epic rant captured by Equality Matters, complained to Monica Crowley and Alan Colmes that the policy violates parents’ rights. His bloviating was rife with ignorant stereotypes about what it even means to be trans — including jokes about name changes — and he offered no compassion whatsoever for the actual experience of trans youth:

COLMES: There has to be some confidentiality. Some students don’t feel comfortable talking to their parents about issues like this. This isn’t as if you wake up some day and Jane says, “Call me John,” or vice versa. [...]

O’REILLY: The parents should be shut out of this whole process? They shouldn’t know anything that’s going on?… Here’s how insane you are and this whole thing is, and this is truly madness, ladies and gentlemen. You’re telling me that a kid can go to a public school in Massachusetts, immediately upon entering the school take off the kid’s shirt and put on a dress, alright, go to the girls’ room when he’s a boy, and then change his name from John to Tiffany, and then after school, put the shirt back on, go home, and he’s still John. [...]

COLMES: Sometimes a child needs the ability to have a confidential conversation with someone not in the family.

O’REILLY: There’s a difference between a conversation and a lifestyle. That’s such a violation of parental rights by the state of Massachusetts. It’s off the chart violation.

Watch it:

It’s unfortunate O’Reilly wasn’t interested in Colmes’ voice of reason about “protecting the dignity” of trans young people, because his goal seems to be quite the opposite. As Carlos Maza thoughtfully explains, gender identity is largely inflexible, and students aren’t allowed to casually change their gender or claim to be transgender for inappropriate reasons. What is important is making sure that trans students feel safe and included, because it’ll have a profound impact on their ability to excel in the learning environment. Similarly, if they don’t feel safe identifying to their parents, outing them only risks opening them to rejection, one of the primary reasons LGBT youth are disproportionately homeless.

The basic goal of these guidelines is to protect trans students, but O’Reilly makes it clear he doesn’t know the first thing about them.

Fox News really doesn’t seem to have anything better to do in December than continue to manufacture the silly “War on Christmas” and then take real umbrage to the fake campaign. Despite Jon Stewart’s epic dismantling earlier this week, Bill O’Reilly continues his reverse-crusade, and now he’s implicating women and LGBT people in the process. Last night, he and Bernard McGuirk, executive producer of Imus in the Morning, revealed that they actually believe there’s a war against Christianity that’s being led by champions of the right to choose and LGBT equality:

MCGUIRK: The war on Christmas is very, very real, and if you ask me, in addition to some grouchy misanthropic heathen atheists it has to do — at the root of it — with two things — abortion and the gay rights agenda, because Christianity is against those things. It’s subtle but that’s why it’s so pronounced in recent years.

O’REILLY: Hundred percent agree. I absolutely agree 100 percent that the diminishment of Christianity is the target and Christmas is the vehicle because the secularists know the opposition to their agenda (legalized drugs is in that as well) comes primarily from the Judeo-Christian traditionalist people.

Watch it (via Towleroad/Mediaite):

While the inclusion of these two important issues in this holiday charade is offensive enough, McGuirk’s pronouncement that all of Christianity opposes a woman’s right to an abortion or a gay couple’s right to raise a family ignores the fact that many women and gay people are Christian. In terms of the so-called “gay rights agenda,” many Christian denominations — including Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists and others — wholeheartedly support the LGBT community and are partners in advocating for marriage equality. If anything, it’s Fox News who’s waging a war on the millions of Christians who don’t agree with the network’s conservative positions.