Fox News Host Laura Ingraham’s Transphobic Attack On Love And Marriage?

Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host and conservative radio commentator, today made what certainly seems to be an apparent transphobic attack on love and marriage. Ingraham posted a link to a Huffington Post article on a marriage proposal by a transgender man that took place during Friday’s White House LGBT Pride reception, and wrote, “Oh no…” as her commentary.

The Huffington Post article details this heartwarming marriage proposal:

A transgender man made a bold move on Friday during an extravagant White House reception in honor of LGBT Pride Month: he dropped down on one knee and proposed to his partner.

Scout, whose full name is legally one word, popped the question to Liz Margolies just minutes after President Barack Obama addressed the guests, many of whom are leaders in the LGBT community. Scout said he had been planning to propose to Margolies at the White House for almost a year, but when the moment presented itself, he realized he hadn’t chosen a place to do it. So he just got down on his knee in the middle of Cross Hall, the main hallway on the first floor of the White House, where dozens of guests were sipping champagne and listening to the U.S. Marine Band.

“I memorized some things but I kind of forgot half of them,” Scout told The Huffington Post right after. He listed some of them: “Because the last three and a half years, you have been an amazing adventure. Because you try harder than anyone in the world. Because while I’m a little scared to spend the rest of my life with you, because you’re so damn fierce, I’m also amazingly excited about the possibility.”

“All I remember hearing is, ‘You’ll be a better person,'” Margolies said.

Apparently Ingraham heard — and saw — something far different.

In a 2010 article on Ingraham, The New Civil Rights Movement quoted this portion of Wikipedia’s bio of Ingraham:

Ingraham earned a bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College, in 1985, and a law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, in 1991. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, she was a staff member of the independent conservative newspaper, The Dartmouth Review. In her senior year, she was the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, its first female editor. She wrote a few controversial articles during her tenure, such as a piece characterizing a campus gay rights group as “cheerleaders for latent campus Sodomites”. She also secretly tape recorded the organization’s meetings, and sent copies to the participants’ parents. Jeffrey Hart, the faculty adviser for the Dartmouth Review, described Ingraham as having “the most extreme antihomosexual views imaginable,” and noted that “she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual and might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS.” In 1997, Ingraham wrote an essay in the Washington Post in which she stated that she changed her views after witnessing “the dignity, fidelity and courage” with which her brother and his late companion coped with AIDS. She said she now understands why gays need protection and regrets her “callous rhetoric.” However, in 2009, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation named Ingraham as one of the “worst anti-gay and anti-transgender voices of 2008,” citing her statements regarding transgendered people and “allusions that being gay is a ‘bad choice’.”

Curiously, the Wikipedia entry on Ingraham has since been altered to remove the “she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual and might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS” and “worst anti-gay and anti-transgender voices of 2008,” references, but they are, in fact, fact.

Ingraham did not immediately respond to a request via Twitter for clarification.