New York's Republican candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, on Monday attempted to clarify remarks he'd made the previous day about homosexuality, telling Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" show that discrimination against gays "is horrible. It's terrible."Paladino, a Tea Party favorite, on Sunday had sharply attacked homosexuality in a speech to Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn even as the tragedy of gay bullying has riveted the nation and a day after three gay men were tortured in the Bronx because of their sexual orientation.Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at Congregation Shaarei Chaim in the trendy and traditional Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where hipsters live cheek by jowl with Hasidic Jews, Paladino was talking about the importance of not "pandering to the pornographers and perverts" when he continued on to the issue of gay rights, which he opposes."I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don't want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option -- it isn't," said Paladino, who has a reputation for being frank to the point of volatility.Paladino also had controversial remarks that he did not deliver, writing at one point in his prepared speech: "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual" and being homosexual "is not how God created us."In the "Today" show interview, Paladino said he is not anti-gay and that he would "absolutely" recruit gays to work in his administration. "You name it. Wherever their expertise may be, we'll put them in our government."Asked about the "brainwashed" remark, he said that comment had "to do with schooling children. My feelings on homosexuality are unequivocal. I have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. My only reservation is marriage."He said that "children should not be exposed to that at a young age. They don't understand this. It's a very difficult thing. And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a Gay Pride parade, and I don't know if you've ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other. It's just a terrible thing."When interviewer Matt Lauer noted that some of the content in Paladino's speech was written by the people he was addressing -- a group of Orthodox Jews -- Paladino said, "That section of my presentation was written, okay, and it was handed to a staffer and it was put into the [text]. I crossed it out. ""That group gets to write the comments they want you to make?" Lauer asked?"No," Paladino responded. "It was with a discussion, but then they went too far in the discussion and I crossed all that stuff out. The only part that I said was what you just quoted me" on about children being brainwashed.Asked to clarify the reference to homosexuality equating with "dysfunction," he replied, "I did not say that. It's unacceptable." Click play below to watch Paladino on the "Today" show:In his remarks Sunday, the Republican also had harsh words for his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, for marching in this year's gay pride parade. "[T]hat's not the example we should be showing our children," he said to applause.He added: "And don't misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way. That would be a dastardly lie. My approach is live and let live."In his "Today" interview, Paladino took another swing at his opponent: "I was trying to define myself very clearly, as oppposed to Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo took his daughters to a Gay Pride parade. Is that normal? Would you do it? Would you take your children to a Gay Pride parade? . . . I don't think it is proper for them to go there and watch a couple of grown men grinding against each other. I don't think that's proper. It's disgusting."Paladino's campaign manager, Michael R. Caputo, told The New York Times on Sunday that the candidate employs a gay man on his campaign staff and said his views reflect those of the Catholic Church."Carl Paladino is simply expressing the views that he holds in his heart as a Catholic," Caputo told The Times . "Carl Paladino is not homophobic, and neither is the Catholic Church."Caputo continued that line in remarks to CNN."Carl Paladino's position on this is exactly equivalent to the Catholic Church," Caputo said . "And if Andrew Cuomo has a problem with the Catholic Church's position on abortion and homosexuality, he needs to take it up with his parish priest."Paladino's comments drew a harsh rebuke from the gay community."His words foster a climate of hatred and intolerance instead of helping heal the city of its wounds," Michael Silver, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, told the Daily News. Silver called on Paladino to apologize immediately.Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto blasted Paladino's comments."Mr. Paladino's statement displays a stunning homophobia and a glaring disregard for basic equality," Vlasto said in a statement. "These comments along with other views he has espoused make it clear that he is way out of the mainstream and is unfit to represent New York."Caputo disagreed. "The majority of New Yorkers agree with him," he said of Paladino's views on homosexuals and gay rights.Polls have shown 58 percent of New Yorkers favor gay marriage, which Paladino says he opposes. Polls have also shown Cuomo expanding his lead on Paladino after the gap had closed last month to six points.Paladino's own personal life has been an issue in the campaign. He has raised charges about Cuomo's sex life that he now admits are unsubstantiated, while Paladino is married but has a 10-year-old daughter from an affair with a former employee of his. He has also admitted to sending out obscene and racist e-mails. ||||| Yesterday was National Coming Out Day - a day devoted to supporting the members of the LGBT community who are our family, friends, and loved ones. It's an especially good time to affirm that support, given the fact that there have been several recent incidents of teenage suicide related to the broad discrimination and bigotry that gay teens face on a daily basis. Naturally, the Washington Post thought that the occasion called for an editorial from anti-gay bigot Tony Perkins, lest there be one day in which support for the LGBT community go without someone decrying them, for "balance." 
 
 The good news is that Perkins does come out against the practice of literally hounding gay teens to take their own life, so if you had imagined he might fail to clear the bar that is, in fact, laying on the ground, worry no more! But really, what's terrible is that organizations dedicated to people not being hounded to suicide because of their sexual orientation seem to want to advocate against the practice, as well: 
 
 However, homosexual activist groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family. 
 
 Yes, how dare GLSEN speak out against the people who are driving teens to suicide. Why can't they learn to sit back, passively, and accept that teenage suicide is just part of being gay? 
 
 There is an abundance of evidence that homosexuals experience higher rates of mental health problems in general, including depression. However, there is no empirical evidence to link this with society's general disapproval of homosexual conduct. In fact, evidence from the Netherlands would seem to suggest the opposite, because even in that most "gay-friendly" country on earth, research has shown homosexuals to have much higher mental health problems. Within the homosexual population, such mental health problems are higher among those who "come out of the closet" at an earlier age. Yet GLSEN's approach is to encourage teens to "come out" when younger and younger--thus likely exacerbating the very problem they claim they want to solve. 
 
 Right away, you're probably wondering why the very obvious causal link is going unmentioned (it's because Perkins is an anti-gay bigot, remember?): 
 
 Per Media Matters: 
 
 While Perkins is right, "Several studies suggest that gay men, lesbians and bisexuals appear to have higher rates of some mental disorders compared with heterosexuals," he's totally wrong that these rates have nothing to do with discrimination. In fact, the article immediately goes on to report that "[d]iscrimination may help fuel these higher rates." The article reported: "In a study that examines possible root causes of mental disorders in LGB people, [Susan] Cochran [PhD] and psychologist Vickie M. Mays, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, explored whether ongoing discrimination fuels anxiety, depression and other stress-related mental health problems among LGB people. The authors found strong evidence of a relationship between the two." Several other studies back up this finding. 
 
 The truly galling thing, of course, is that Perkins is happy to share this opinion on any day of the year, but the WaPo thought that this would be a good thing to run on a day specifically given over to the support of the LGBT community. But then, 2010 has been a banner year for anti-gay sentiment at the paper. When the National Organization for Marriage took on Washington, DC's support for marriage equality, the Washington Post was happy to endorse their chosen emissary, Delano Hunter, in the Ward 5 council race against incumbent Harry Thomas. In a remarkably naive take on the matter, the Post's editors averred: 
 
 Mr. Hunter is not a supporter of marriage equality, but he is not the homophobe his critics make him out to be, but rather someone who thinks there is a way to provide equality for gays while respecting the beliefs of religious groups. He said he would not seek to change the law. 
 
 Oh, sure he wouldn't! NOM apparently felt very differently. You would think that the Post wouldn't be so easily snowed, but then again, this was the paper that penned a glowing profile of the organization's executive director -- a man who heads a pressure group dedicated to constructing byzantine theories about how the private lives and the desire for equality of the LGBT community is actually a form of tyranny -- "ruthlessly sane." 
 
 Maybe homophobes are the only people subscribing to newspapers or something? 
 
 [Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.] ||||| Milo Yiannopoulos finally went too far for conservatives. On Monday, he lost his book deal, and his speech at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was canceled. And on Tuesday, he resigned from the ultra-conservative website Breitbart. 
 
 But it wasn’t his racism, sexism, transphobia, or other kinds of bigotry that led to Yiannopoulos’s fall. Nope. After all that, it’s comments apparently supporting child molestation that did Yiannopoulos in. 
 
 Here’s the backstory: Over the weekend, it was revealed that Yiannopoulos was invited to give a speech at CPAC, the biggest mainstream conservative conference in America. That sparked a lot of outrage — particularly among the left, which pointed out that Yiannopoulos has a long history of making all sorts of bigoted comments. 
 
 But liberal outrage wasn’t what got CPAC to pull the plug or Yiannopoulos to resign from Breitbart. Instead, the final straw was a video resurfaced by the conservative website Reagan Battalion — in which Yiannopoulos defended the idea of “13 year olds” having sex with “older men,” referencing his own story that he benefited from a priest molesting him when he was a teenager. 
 
 Here is the uncut 5 minute video of Milo Yiannopoulos advocating for Pederasty involving "13 Year old" and "older men." HIS WORDS.@Mschlapp pic.twitter.com/mAgmfpuyvu — The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) February 20, 2017 
 
 “In the homosexual world, particularly, some of those relationships between younger boys and older men — the sort of ‘coming of age’ relationships — the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable sort of rock,” Yiannopoulos said. 
 
 That, apparently, was the tipping point for CPAC. In a statement, CPAC organizers said they originally invited Yiannopoulos, whose speaking event at a college campus had to be canceled because it literally caused riots, to stand up for free speech — but that Yiannopoulos’s comments on child molestation went too far. 
 
 “Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference,” American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp said in a statement. 
 
 Yiannopoulos has since apologized. In a Facebook post, he clarified that he doesn’t believe pedophilia and child molestation are okay: “I would like to restate my utter disgust at adults who sexually abuse minors. I am horrified by pedophilia and I have devoted large portions of my career as a journalist to exposing child abusers.” 
 
 As for his actual remarks, he explained, “As to some of the specific claims being made, sometimes things tumble out of your mouth on these long, late-night live-streams, when everyone is spit-balling, that are incompletely expressed or not what you intended. Nonetheless, I've reviewed the tapes that appeared last night in their proper full context and I don't believe they say what is being reported.” (Who among us hasn’t accidentally defended child molestation on a late-night live stream?) 
 
 But the apology didn’t stop the enormous backlash. Later in the afternoon, Simon & Schuster and Threshold Editions announced that they have canceled their book deal with Yiannopoulos. And under apparent pressure from Breitbart staff who demanded Yiannopoulos’s resignation, he quit on Tuesday. 
 
 For many people, the whole controversy has raised more questions than answers. Why was it that it took something as low and awful as support for child molestation to finally get conservatives to disown Yiannopoulos? What about all the bigotry he has pushed in the past? Why were those other remarks not enough? 
 
 What’s remarkable about this whole affair is how unsurprising it is. The video that the Reagan Battalion resurfaced has been around since July 2016. And Yiannopoulos has a long history of making offensive, provocative remarks; it’s what he’s known for. It was totally predictable that a mainstream conservative group’s attempt to reach out to someone who’s basically an internet troll would blow up in some way — yet the fact CPAC and other conservatives even felt compelled to reach out to someone like Yiannopoulos says a lot about conservatism today. 
 
 Yiannopoulos is a troll — and this is far from his first offensive remark 
 
 As journalist Nicole Hemmer explained, none of this should be surprising to anyone: “As someone who’s been on this beat for a while: everything you’re learning about Milo has been public for ages. CPAC made its choice.” 
 
 Yiannopoulos, after all, has a long history of offensive remarks. Here are a few examples: 
 
 He claimed he “went gay” so he “didn’t have to deal with nutty broads.” 
 
 He was banned on Twitter after he launched a racist, sexist harassment campaign against black actress Leslie Jones, whom he described as “barely literate” and “a man.” 
 
 He often mentions that he only dates nonwhite men — in a way that deliberately exoticizes and stereotypes black men. In one column, he asked, “am I racist for not dating white dudes?” He later added, “These days, I wouldn’t actually write ‘no whites’ on my profile. Some people would find that offensive. But I would come up with a formulation to achieve the same effect, like, say, ‘9 inches and over, and don’t contact me if you can name more than four hockey players.’” 
 
 He named and showed the picture of a transgender student previously at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee during a speech at the school — effectively doxxing a nonpublic figure and opening her up to harassment because he didn’t like her feminist activism. 
 
 He repeatedly argued on Real Time With Bill Maher last week that trans people are “disordered,” and even suggested that gay people might be as well. (Major medical groups, like the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, say being transgender or gay is not a mental disorder.) 
 
 He hired a black porn star, Jovan Jordan, as a bodyguard when attending a meetup for video gamers. “My most ardent haters are feminists, and their fear of penises is well-known,” he argued. “It was vital, therefore, that I sought the services of a man believed to have the biggest dick in the porn industry.” 
 
 He said that men shouldn’t be kicked out from universities for groping women. 
 
 He declared his birthday “World Patriarchy Day.” 
 
 He created the “Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant,” a college scholarship available only to white men to put them “on equal footing with their female, queer and ethnic minority classmates.” 
 
 This is who Yiannopoulos is: As my colleague Zack Beauchamp explained, his entire shtick is to say something inflammatory, anger a whole lot of people, get widespread media attention, refuse to back down, and say he did it all to stand up for free speech — because no one can control what he says. Yiannopoulos pushes the boundaries just enough to force this chain of events, which conveniently prop him up as a hero. 
 
 But Yiannopoulos’s child molestation remarks crossed the line. For one, condoning child molestation goes too far for just about everyone, regardless of political party. 
 
 But the remarks also may have crossed the line because they played into longstanding conservative fears about gay men — specifically, the myth that there’s a link between homosexuality and pedophilia. 
 
 The Family Research Council, a conservative anti-LGBTQ group, still promotes this myth on its website. And it was used in the past to demonize gay men and block the advancement of gay rights — such as, retired UC Davis professor Gregory Herek explained, “in 1977, when Anita Bryant campaigned successfully to repeal a Dade County (FL) ordinance prohibiting anti-gay discrimination, she named her organization ‘Save Our Children,’ and warned that ‘a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.’” (The empirical research shows there is no scientific basis to this myth.) 
 
 In this context, Yiannopoulos’s support of child molestation as a gay man played into preexisting conservative fears about homosexuality, making him a particularly alarming figure. That, coupled with society’s total rejection of pedophilia, may have contributed to Yiannopoulos’s fall — leading not just to a lost book deal and canceled speech, but to him quitting from Breitbart, the media outlet where he made so many of his past offensive remarks. 
 
 Yiannopoulos claims he’s just defending free speech 
 
 In the past, Yiannopoulos has explained away his offensive remarks by arguing that he’s simply standing up for free speech. This was the tack he took when he appeared on Bill Maher’s show over the weekend. 
 
 “All I care about is free speech and free expression,” he said. “I want people to be able to be, do, and say anything.” 
 
 To this end, he points to college campuses as evidence of liberal “political correctness” running amok in a way that’s stifled free speech. He can claim some personal experience here, like the time anti-fascists rioted at UC Berkeley when he was scheduled to give a speech there and forced him to cancel his event. But this is part of a broader conservative talking point about “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and other examples of left-leaning students on college campuses doing things that, according to critics, stifle free speech. 
 
 This isn’t something that’s exclusive to conservatives. Maher, who identifies as liberal, appeared to invite Yiannopoulos to his show at least in part because he agrees that liberals are too sensitive to speech that they disagree with. “You make liberals crazy for that part of liberalism that has gone off the deep end,” Maher told Yiannopoulos. 
 
 But other liberals have argued that this supposed defense of free speech is really just a ruse to say all sorts of racist, sexist, and bigoted things. 
 
 ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum pointed out, for example, that despite CPAC’s claim that it invited Yiannopoulos to defend his free speech rights, they disinvited him when his speech went too far for them. The racism, sexism, and other offensive remarks were apparently fine, but it was the support for child molestation that apparently crossed a line. 
 
 4. Conservatives pretend their insistence on providing platforms to disgusting people is about free speech, not content — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 20, 2017 
 
 5. But as the Milo incident reveals, they believe certain kinds of speech should not be given a platform — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 20, 2017 
 
 7. Conservative "free speech" advocates simply believe that racists, sexists and other kind of bigots should get lots of access — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 20, 2017 
 
 After all, CPAC knew of Yiannopoulos’s past offensive remarks. It’s one of the reasons people rioted in Berkeley, decried Yiannopoulos’s invitation to Maher’s show, and told CPAC not to invite Yiannopoulos in the first place. 
 
 Yet CPAC invited him, publishers signed book deals with him, and Breitbart employed him anyway — at least until his pro-pedophilia comments surfaced. 
 
 Modern conservatism has a problem with bigotry 
 
 The entire debacle, however, shows a broader issue: Modern conservatism has a huge problem with bigotry in its ranks. 
 
 Consider Donald Trump. He called Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US during his campaign launch event. He proposed banning Muslims, an entire religious group, from entering the US. He argued that a federal judge overseeing the Trump University lawsuit should be disqualified because of his Mexican heritage. And at campaign events and as president, he has spoken of black people through coded language that suggests all black people live in jobless, crime-ridden “inner cities” and all may even work for the Congressional Black Caucus. 
 
 What’s more, racism and xenophobia appeared to predict support for Trump. One telling study, conducted by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Stanford shortly before the election, found that if people who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump — suggesting there’s a significant racial element to his support. 
 
 And this doesn’t even get into the other offensive remarks Trump has made, including about sexual assault — like when he said he can grab women by the genitals and get away with it because he’s a celebrity. 
 
 Yet Trump won the Republican primary and, ultimately, the 2016 general election. He’s not only continued to get the backing of the Republican Party but is also scheduled to talk at CPAC this week. 
 
 Or consider Yiannopoulos’s resignation from Breitbart — one of the most read news outlets on the right, based on online traffic numbers. Breitbart is a news outlet that has run all sorts of explicitly racist, sexist, and bigoted articles. That was, apparently, fine under the website’s editorial standards. But once Yiannopoulos’s pro-pedophilia remarks surfaced, only then did he apparently go too far for Breitbart. 
 
 Some conservatives have looked at all of this in shock and horror. Conservative pundit Glenn Beck, for one, has become a top critic on the right of the Trump administration. In one instance, after Trump appointed former Breitbart head and alt-right champion Steve Bannon in November as his chief strategist, Beck suggested that Americans are racist if they let Trump keep Bannon in charge. 
 
 “When people really understand what the alt-right is, this neo-nationalist, neo-Nazi, white supremacy idea that Bannon is pushing hard,” Beck said, “I hope they wake up because, if not, we are racist. If that’s what we accept and we know it, then we are racist. I contend people don’t know what the alt-right is yet.” 
 
 But Beck seems to represent a minority on the right, given Trump’s ascendance to the White House and his continued support from Republicans. 
 
 Conservatives’ apathy to such racism, misogyny, and other offensive remarks is how CPAC and other conservatives could overlook Yiannopoulos’s racism, sexism, and other kinds of bigotry when they touted him as a free speech champion — only to consider his child molestation comments beyond the boundaries of accepted free speech. 
 
 Watch: It’s now on America’s institutions — and Republicans — to check Donald Trump
– Carl Paladino may have implied yesterday that homosexuality is not as “valid or successful” as heterosexuality, but that’s only because being gay is “a very, very ugly experience for those that are discriminated against,” he explains today. “And it shouldn’t be. Our society should be more accepting of them.” The New York gubernatorial candidate defended his remarks on Today, telling Matt Lauer that, far from being a homophobe, he actually believes “the discrimination against homosexuals is horrible. It’s terrible … I have a nephew and I have many workers who suffer that.” He also defended his comment about children being “brainwashed” into homosexuality, saying his only concern is that “children should not be exposed to that at a young age. Exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a Gay Pride parade, and I don't know if you've ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other … Would you take your children to a Gay Pride parade? I don't think it is proper for them to go there and watch a couple of grown men grinding against each other. I think it's disgusting." For more, including the original video of his controversial remarks, click here.