It’s easy to call Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly a hypocrite, mostly, of course, because he is. He oozes concern for the plight of queer teenagers while doing his level best to make sure the world remains a dangerous place in which to grow up gay. He pontificates on the sanctity of the church while being sued by a former producer who claimed he whispered dirty fantasies to her over the phone. And he shakes his fist in defense of truth, justice, and the American way while repeating stories that are false.

But there’s one way in which O’Reilly shows a remarkable consistency. Whether on his nightly show The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, his interviews on other people’s shows, or his radio program, the ideology of the closet permeates nearly every word about homosexuality that comes out of Bill O’Reilly’s mouth. He may describe himself as a moderate because he doesn’t want to see gay people bashed, imprisoned, or fired from our jobs, but the truth is, he just wants us to shut up, and doesn’t hesitate to say so.

Below we’ll take a look at a collection of queer-relevant O’Reilly clips, and find out just what he thinks is wrong with Gay America, how he’d like to see it fixed – and what the queer world looks like through Bill O’Reilly’s eyes.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE KIDS

It’s not clear what Bill O’Reilly, the man, thinks about gay people – although if the sexual harassment suit filed by his former producer Andrea Mackris is accurate, he’s very, very fond of lesbians. What is clear is that Bill O’Reilly, the TV personality, seems to think we’re both radioactive and contagious. After all, just sitting next to a same-sex couple holding hands at a baseball game is apparently enough to send any normal parent into paroxysms of fury at having to explain our existence to their innocent children, who, had they not attended a baseball game on “Gay Day,” would have grown up in a Leave it to Beaver world of heteronormativity and traditional values, never knowing that homosexuals actually watch baseball.

That makes sense to O’Reilly, because in his world, if you’re gay or lesbian, then everything you do that hints at, reveals, suggests, or discloses your homosexuality is the exact equivalent of having sex in public.

The San Diego Padres vs. the Children

Of all the crimes of which lesbians and gay men have been accused over the centuries, from consorting with Satan to betraying nuclear secrets to the Soviets, one of the strangest is the charge O’Reilly makes on this episode of Fox’s O’Reilly Factor: Watching a baseball game in the presence of children.

With every loaded word and phrase in the lexicon of homophobia, O’Reilly tries to cast the San Diego Padres and the gay and lesbian community of San Diego as debauchers of children and enemies of the family. He says “co-mingling” when he means “sitting next to,” and refers ominously to “clusters” of gay people filling the ball park – making the actual sunny images of sports fans out for an afternoon of baseball that are playing in the background seem like some clownish vision of hell straight out of a Fellini movie.

Not only was it Gay Day at Petco Park, O’Reilly informed his viewers in lurid tones, but that same afternoon was hat day for kids. Yes, every child who came to the game was, shockingly, given a hat. This proved too much for O’Reilly Factor guest Sandy Rios to bear. She’s not only a Fox News staffer, but president of family values group Culture Campaign, and she found the whole thing to be “a huge effort to propagate this to our children.”

Also appearing on the Factor, Ron Deharte of San Diego Pride pointed out that children, families, and gay people go to baseball games every day, and suggested the trauma is probably not quite as profound as O’Reilly and Rios believe. Bill all but shrieked in response, “The issue is, you're clustering a group that's based on sexuality, okay? That's what it's based on. You know that. With children.”