Like NFL player Asante Samuel, Rush Limbaugh is a bit flummoxed about why everyone is celebrating the coming out of NBA player Jason Collins. On his show earlier this week, Limbaugh complained that there is excitement for a person’s sexuality being “rammed down everybody’s throat all the time,” but no “tolerance” for people who oppose homosexuality:

LIMBAUGH: Folks, I grew up in a family where people’s sexual orientation, preferences, whatever, weren’t even discussed. Why can’t everybody just put your sexual preferences on Facebook and call it a day? What do we need to stop everything and have a national day of celebration, or mourning (depending on your point of view), or recognition or whatever about this? This tolerance, it only goes one way. So Person X of some national stature announces his sexual orientation as gay, and applause!

It’s a great day for America. We’re really taking giant leaps ahead. If anybody says, “You know, I’m not big on that,” it’s, “You bigot! You racist! You extremist. You homophobe.” There is no tolerance at all here. Not only do these people have to publicly announce it, but everybody else has to applaud and accept it.

Limbaugh went on to juxtapose Collins’s coming out with President Bill Clinton’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky, bizarrely suggesting they were comparable stories about a person’s private sex life — in other words, if Clinton’s sex life was supposed to be private, so too should Collins’s. Listen to it:

What seems lost on Limbaugh is the role of stigma. An issue like acceptance of homosexuality doesn’t have equal and opposite points of view, as if everyone were asked what their favorite color is. The gay community has faced real persecution in the century since people first started coming out, and bullying, family rejection, and legal inequality continue to be significant obstacles for them. Just because opposition to LGBT equality has become the minority opinion in this country does not mean that people who hold such positions are now oppressed.

Limbaugh’s comments reflect the expectation put forth by many conservative groups that religion should justify discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. In reality, “tolerance” for intolerance is really just code for enabing more intolerance.

Shortly before the US Supreme Court heard arguments to strike down restrictions on same-sex marriage, the Republican National Committee outraged hardline conservatives with a report calling for greater flexibility on gay rights and immigration reform in order to lure young people into the Republican Party. GOP strategist Karl Rove piled on the insult by speculating the Republican Party’s next presidential candidate could support marriage equality (though later walked it back). Evangelical leaders erupted in protest, threatening to abandon the GOP if the party were to change its increasingly unpopular stance.

The tide is changing rapidly against this so-called evangelical base of the GOP. Last week, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) became the first sitting Republican senator to declare his support for marriage equality. While a majority of all Republicans still oppose same-sex marriage, a new poll found that 49 percent of Republicans under 50 years old actually support extending the right to marry to same-sex couples.

Below are a few of the social conservatives the GOP would have to do without if they abandoned their opposition to same-sex marriage:

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR)

“They might [decide to support same-sex marriage], and if they do, they’re going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk. And it’s not because there’s an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody’s homophobic that I know of, but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard. If we have subjective standards, that means that we’re willing to move our standards based on the prevailing whims of culture.” [3/20/2013]

Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council

“The vast majority of the GOP base believes that marriage is a non-negotiable plank of the national platform. Anything less, writes Byron York, ‘could come back to haunt the RNC in the not-too-distant future.’ [...] If the RNC abandons marriage, evangelicals will either sit the elections out completely – or move to create a third party. Either option puts Republicans on the path to a permanent minority. [3/19/2013]

Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate

“Shame on the politicians and the judges that are trying to undermine the institution of marriage. I’m a Republican…let me say to my party: if you bail out on this issue, I will leave the party and I will take as many people as I possibly can.” [3/26/2013]

Watch it:

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel chairman

“If worst case scenario the last week of June we come down with a bad decision, the church and people of faith and values need to rise up. We just simply cannot allow this to become the law of the land, it will fundamentally change who we are, it will fundamentally weaken the family and religious freedom will be in the crosshairs. [3/26/2013]

Rush Limbaugh, talk radio host

“If the party makes that [gay marriage] something official that they support, they’re not going to pull the homosexual activist voters away from the Democrat Party, but they are going to cause their base to stay home and throw their hands up in utter frustration…Whether they like it or not, the Republican Party’s base is sufficiently large that they cannot do without them and their problem is they don’t like them. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.” [3/18/2013]

The growing right-wing schism was on full display at CPAC earlier this month, when organizers disinvited the gay conservative group GOProud to appease anti-gay board members. The decision to exclude GOProud sparked protests among prominent conservative commentators worried about the GOP’s flailing outreach efforts to more socially liberal minorities like women and young people.

Still, evangelicals and social conservatives have little cause to worry. Though public opinion on gay rights is evolving rapidly, the Republican Party does not plan to change their stance on marriage equality anytime soon. The RNC’s report, while encouraging outreach to Latinos, blacks, women, and young people, notably excluded the gay community from the list. Rather than disavow exclusionary and discriminatory policies enshrined in their platform, the current GOP strategy is to sugarcoat their anti-gay rhetoric in hopes that young voters will overlook their true intentions.

Rush Limbaugh was astonished Wednesday that he had been criticized for his discussion earlier in the week comparing the normalizing of same-sex marriage with supposed efforts to “normalize pedophilia.” Instead of clarifying a distinction, however, Limbaugh doubled down and continued to offer connections between homosexuality and pedophilia where none exist, blaming the article he cited for doing the same:

LIMBAUGH: I didn’t write it. I didn’t conceive it.  Pedophilia wasn’t even on my mind until I started doing the show prep for yesterday’s program and saw it.  Now, the Guardian article itself makes a very similar comparison.  The Guardian quoted the person in charge of one of the pedophilia studies.  Her name is Sarah Goode, G-o-o-d-e.  Here’s the quote:  “The reclassification of pedophilia as a sexual orientation would, however, play into what Goode calls the sexual liberation discourse, which has existed since the seventies.  There are a lot of people, she says, who say we outlawed homosexuality and we were wrong. Perhaps we’re wrong about pedophilia.”  She made the connection to gays.  The story makes the connection to gays.

I didn’t compare pedophilia to gay marriage.  All I said was, to those of you who are hearing this — i.e., pedophilia is normal — realize that it’s in a liberal publication and it’s an advocacy story.  They’re advocating for it here.  Or the people they quote are.  It’s the purpose of the study.  I didn’t make any of this up.  There are people advocating for classifying pedophilia as normal, they did a study.  A lot of people.  The results of the study.  I simply asked you to think what was your first reaction when you heard first about gay marriage?  And I said you’re probably having the same reaction here.  And gay marriage is now standard, normal operating procedure.  This could be, too.  Once the left gloms onto something, once they have a cause, they don’t let go of it.

It’s unfortunate that anybody is seemingly advocating for pedophilia, but the attempt to redefine pedophilia has nothing to do with the moral juxtaposition to marriage equality Limbaugh imposed in his analysis. There is no moral comparison to be made between an abusive act that violates a person’s consent and a loving consenting act that harms no one. So long as Limbaugh continues to reinforce the stereotype that there is some kind of connection between homosexuality and pedophilia, he remains guilty of demonizing gay people and misinforming his listeners.