The Despicable Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen is the author of Coming out Straight, whose book has been used in speeches to justify a proposed law in Uganda to execute homosexuals. This is an absolutely repugnant person. Observe his first statement, that "since the 1950's, the Ugandan government has punished people for engaging in homosexual behavior". Then observe that, minutes later, Cohen says it's "inconceivable" that they would pass a law to execute gays. Inconceivable? If he wants to represent this Ugandan history of oppression against gays as though it were common knowledge, how on earth could he not know that his book and his message would serve as justification for continuation of what he knows to be longstanding practice of oppression of homosexuals?

Then he denies that his book portrays gays as predators against children, which Maddow promptly follows up by reading an offending passage from his book with all of the outrageous claims you might expect. He disavows knowledge of the bill and disapproves it, but defends the sponsor of the bill, who was holding up a copy of his book. He can't even use his appearance as an opportunity to just drop everything and unequivocally state that the bill is abhorrent, no, he uses his airtime to spread his message of "opportunity," seconds after conceding his book is being used to justify execution. What a terrible, terrible man.