Dave Agema and his wife, Barb

Michigan-based Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema is offering no apologies for his Facebook posts claiming that homosexuality is rife with health consequences and “usually leads to early death.” Instead, he doubled down on them in a conversation with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins during his radio show Wednesday. In addition to reiterating that homosexuality is a chosen “lifestyle” comparable to alcoholism, Agema went on to claim that schools are actually going to turn kids gay:

AGEMA: First of all, what will happen to your school kids when they are in school. It’s already being taught in a lot of places that it is an accepted lifestyle. Then the next thing that will occur is your kids will come home and say, “I think this is a good thing and I think I want to be one,” and if you as a parent stand up and say, “You know what, this is against my moral beliefs and my biblical beliefs,” then the next thing you’re going to get into is hate crimes because you’re speaking against something that’s been sanctioned by the state. If you look at Denmark and others then the state also tells the churches you have to marry homosexuals and if you don’t what may happen in the United States is you might lose your tax exempt status.

So this all blew up and so I made a web page here listing several other studies that show the harmful effects of the homosexual lifestyle. Just imagine this, if our kids are in school instead of being told that this is an acceptable and OK lifestyle we are actually briefed and taught the ramifications of this lifestyle, that you’re going to live twenty years less than the average person, you are going to die younger and here’s all the diseases you’re going to contract, there’d be a totally different philosophy here instead of basically telling the kids that this is good. So I think we got to go into this with our eyes wide open and what the 2 or 3 percent of homosexuals what they are doing in the United States today is trying to get the courts to do what they can’t get the individual states to do, and that’s dictate that all states will accept homosexual marriage.

Listen to it (via RightWingWatch):

Perkins agreed with all of Agema’s points — notably because the Family Research Council promotes the same ideas — calling them “documented facts” that a person should be able to share without being “a bigot or a hater.”

As Harvey Milk joked when he was fighting the Briggs Initiative in 1978, “If teachers are going to affect you as role models, there’d be a lot of nuns running around the streets today”:

It was no secret that George Washington was straight, at least as evidenced by having been married to a woman — whom most Americans can even name. The same could at least be superficially assumed for 43 of the 44 presidents. James Buchanan was a bachelor and is assumed by many to have been gay, and plenty of rumors persist about the actual sexual orientation of other presidents (including Washington). But the important lesson is that disclosing one’s heterosexuality has never been considered a violation of anyone’s privacy.

Today, Anderson Cooper disclosed publicly for the first time that he is gay. It wasn’t a particular surprise, because Cooper has lived in a so-called “glass closet.” He never denied that he was gay, and he’s been photographed with his boyfriend (who owns a gay bar) on numerous occasions at public events. Still, by taking the important step of coming out, Cooper can now be even more of a role model to LGBT youth and help people across the country become just a bit more familiar with people who are gay.

The Guardian is running debating stories today about the lead-up to Cooper’s admission: Was Cooper bullied to come out or was pressuring him to do so important for combating anti-gay stigma? The problem with the question is that it has a faulty premise — or at least it should. Sexual orientation is a basic dimension of a person’s identity, just like sex or race. In the absence of homophobia, a same-sex orientation ought not warrant any more “privacy” than an opposite-sex orientation. The problem is that for as long as the current understanding of homosexuality has been visible in society (a little more than a century), anti-gay activists have insisted that it be identified solely by behavior.

The reason Cooper and others might still feel that coming out is revealing too much of their “personal life” is because anti-gay stigma depends on reinforcing the “ick” factor. When people acknowledge that they are gay or lesbian, they are immediately identified by (and judged for) who they have sex with — and inherently how. The same is surprisingly untrue of heterosexuals, who often even produce proof of their sexual deeds in the form of children. As acceptance for the LGBT community continues to grow at its breakneck pace, this distinction should disappear. Gay people should no more be identified by their sexual behavior than anybody else.

As a result of societal progress already made, Cooper will likely not face any negative consequences from finally stepping out of that glass closet. The anti-gay people who attack everything gay will attack — and they have — but their impact is negligible. The excited media reaction today reminds us how prolific Harvey Milk was when he insisted that “every gay person must come out” over 30 years ago. Coming out as gay isn’t a disclosure of our personal lives or sex lives; it’s an admission that we as gay people have lives at all.

A New York City group known as the Jewish Political Action Committee (JPAC) is now alleging that the legalization of same-sex marriage has led to a “surge” of child molestation:

The Jewish Political Action Committee is now organizing an awareness program to stop Gay molesters from attacking children and teens. Since the gay marriage bill in New York was introduced,there has been a surge of gay attacks against youngsters in New York. Children and teens are now at the mercy of the militant gay liberals who are brainwashing society to their evil.

The group is distributing signs that condemn homosexuality as a sin worse than murder and that claim “G-d sent AIDS to punish male gays.”

While JPAC’s efforts may be small and local, they reflect a renewed trend among anti-gay groups trying to connect homosexuality and pedophilia, even though the two are mutually exclusive phenomenon that cannot be compared. Anita Bryant and John Briggs were making the same claims 40 years ago as they fought against gay rights, but groups like the National Organization for Marriage, the Family Research Council, the Liberty Counsel, and the American Family Association have all recently been promoting the connection again.

These efforts to demonize the LGBT community reveal a complete misunderstanding of the nature of sexual orientation that dates back decades. Watch gay activist Harvey Milk debate John Briggs in 1978, challenging him on the very same claims that gays were more likely to be child molesters (and thus should not be allowed to teach):