Fox News Contributor Keith Ablow is a Bigot

I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or refer Keith Ablow to a Community Mental Health Center. After reading his column this week, where he derides Chaz Bono and Bono's entry on ABC's Dancing With the Stars program, I have to wonder what's wrong with Ablow.

He must have some sexuality and gender identity issues he needs to work out, because his level of vitriol directed against homosexuality (likening it to pedophilia) and transgendered people has reached toe-tapping Larry Craig levels of in-the-closet-crazy. Writing on Fox News'

, Ablow actually argues that children will be harmed by allowing them to watch Chaz Bono perform on Dancing With the Stars. No, really. He thinks the mere act of watching Bono dance on TV will harm children. Here is is, spewing his 21st Century Klansman psychobabble. "I advise parents to not allow their children to watch the episodes in which Chaz appears," Ablow writes. "Here's why: Many of the children who might be watching will be establishing a sense of self which includes, of course, a sexual/gender identity. Some will be girls becoming comfortable with dramatic changes in their bodies. Some will be boys coming to terms with integrating the dawn of manhood with exquisite feelings of vulnerability. Young viewers will include tomboyish girls and sensitive, less stereotypically “masculine” boys. They will also include children who have sustained the losses of loved ones and are wrestling with depression, perhaps wondering who they are absent their deceased mothers or fathers." Really, Keith? Sexuality is so fluid that a grieving child can watch the show, pine for his deceased mother, and decide he really IS a woman trapped inside a man's body? Do you realize how insane that sounds...and is? Sexuality is formed at birth. It's been proven by study after study. Arguing otherwise is like arguing you aren't born left-handed. You might learn to live right-handed, through brow-beating by teachers and parents who don't want to deal with your left-handedness...but that doesn't make you any less left-handed. It makes them bigoted against lefties. The same can be said about sexuality. But wait, Ablow's absurdity gets better. "The last thing vulnerable children and adolescents need, as they wrestle with the normal process of establishing their identities, is to watch a captive crowd in a studio audience applaud on cue for someone whose search for an identity culminated with the removal of her breasts, the injection of steroids and, perhaps one day soon, the fashioning of a make-shift phallus to replace her vagina." Yes, Keith. It would be terrible for children to see that it is acceptable to be different, in whatever form "different" might take. It would be terrible for children to learn tolerance for lifestyles that are not their own. It would be terrible if children learned that it's OK to be gay, if that's who they are, or transgendered, or disabled, or mentally ill, or whatever the case may be. Yes, it would be horrible for children to learn acceptance. Keith, the last thing that vulnerable children need is the hand-wrung concerns of pseudo-scientists such as yourself, who can't stop for two minutes to see that your personal bigotry and tormented inner sexual needs are standing in the way of rational thinking. Ablow continues. "Chaz Bono should not be applauded any more than someone who, tragically, believes that his species, rather than gender, is what is amiss and asks a plastic surgeon to build him a tail of flesh harvested from his abdomen. If only a plastic surgeon would acquiesce, all would be well." What is it with conservatives, sex, and animals? Every time I turn around, another conservative is waving around the bestiality card. Rick Santorum can't talk about homosexuality without referring to men having sex with animals. Now Ablow thinks that we're one great leap away from celebrating people wanting some literal tail in their life. Let's just get right to the point, Keith. We don't celebrate Chaz Bono for having surgery, changing genders, or taking steroids. We don't celebrate the change. We celebrate that he made the change DESPITE the opposition and bigotry from neanderthals like yourself. We celebrate the courage involved in making such a choice in the face of opposition by the semi-evolved (or, if you prefer, the semi-intelligently-designed). We celebrate that it was his choice to make, and we support his right to live out his life with dignity and respect. As for letting children watch the show, I absolutely will let my son watch the program. For what it's worth, I also let him paint his toenails (when he wants to, which isn't often) and play with a mix of GI Joes and dolls. His sexuality is already encoded in his brain, Keith. No amount of machismo or pretty-princess playing is going to change that. Most importantly, however he turns out, his mother and I will love him unconditionally for who he really is — and not who I, you, or society wish him to be. The more I think about it, the more I wish Keith were here right now. I'd love to sit him down and ask him what happened in his childhood to turn him into such a bitter, hateful, fearful monster. That's right, Keith; show me on the doll where the world touched you and maybe we can talk you out of this self-loathing rally you've got rolling here. In the meantime, stay away from my son. I'm more afraid of your influence on his mind than Chaz Bono's.