On Monday Bill O’Reilly had a gay activist on his show who runs a web site that outs gay public officials. Bill (rightly, in my opinion) criticized this practice, but then proceeded to work in his claim that a female judge on the Massachusetts Supreme Court is a lesbian.

John Cook from the Chicago Tribune has the story:

On shows in November, last week, and again on Monday, O’Reilly has referred to “the lesbian judge on the Supreme Court who dissented” in the court’s landmark ruling in favor of gay marriage.

O’Reilly has never named the judge, but of the three dissenting justices in that case, only one–Justice Martha B. Sosman–is a woman.

“Justice Sosman is not a lesbian,” said court spokeswoman Joan Kenney. “We don’t know where Bill O’Reilly got that information, but it is not correct.”

Sosman declined an interview request.

A Fox spokesman said O’Reilly stands by his claim, which is based on “more than one independent source.”

The spokesman declined to identify those sources, citing confidentiality.

Here’s a short clip of the segment in question.

O’Reilly kind of flails around in the clip and blames his “outing” of the judge on unnamed guests, but I saw some of these shows- he brought this up last week and repeated the claim over and over.  Once he actually taunted a guest for not knowing about this “lesbian judge,” ridiculing him for not knowing enough about the case.

In Monday’s segment, O’Reilly never really said why his outing of a public official (who it turns out is straight) is justified while his guest’s web site is objectionable.

That Bill O’Reilly- He’s wacky.