Bill O'Reilly: Telling a Gay Person They're Going to Hell Should Be Illegal

I generally view Billy O'Reilly to be a crazy, mean spirited windbag.  But every now and then he will say something that is dead on target correct.  Such as his statement that telling a gay person "you're going to Hell" should be illegal.   One can just imagine the swoons and flying spittle amongst the Christofascist set at O'Reilly apostasy.   Nothing gives these modern day Pharisees more joy than telling us gays that we are going to Hell, although I suspect that, if there is a Hell, it is mostly peopled by truly horrible people - e.g., Hitler and Stalin - and the modern day Pharisee crowd and conservative religious leaders such as John Paul II.  Towleroad looks at O'Reilly's statement:

[O]n his show last night, the Fox News host expressed a belief that telling a gay person "you're going to Hell" should be illegal--at least, in some instances.

O'Reilly's guest last night was John Stossel--who hosts a weekly show on Fox Business--and the comment came amidst a discussion of American evangelist Tony Miano, who was arrested in London last week after preaching against homosexuality in front of a shopping center in Wimbledon.  According to the Telegraph, Miano was arrested "under the controversial clause of the Public Order Act which bans 'insulting' words or behaviour."

"I think that should be against the law," O'Reilly said of any hypothetical anti-gay preacher who "went up to a homosexual, got in his face and said, 'you're going to hell, you're going to hell.' He’s invading the person’s space. He’s bringing intentional, personal anguish to the person. I think that person should be protected.”

Stossel expressed some agreement with O'Reilly but said that the standard should be based on "fighting words" that were meant to incite violence.

As I said, the Christofascists - think Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, et al -  must be livid with O'Reilly since they believe that they can do whatever they want to whoever they want as long as they hide behind the smoke screen of professed "deeply held religious belief."  Here's the video: