Watch Out Bill O'Reilly! There Are Roving Lesbian Gangs

Posted by Tara Lohan at 3:01 PM on July 11, 2007.

As if there wasn't enough to worry about these days, apparently all over the country -- from New York to California -- the streets are being terrorized by lesbian gangs. At least, according to Bill O'Reilly and Fox's "crime analyst" Rod Wheeler.

On a June 21 episode of the "O'Reilly Factor" on Fox, Wheeler claimed that as many as 150 lesbian gangs prowled the Washington DC area and across the country these gangs (some known as Gays Taking Over or Dykes Taking Over) were responsible for beating people, raping girls, and indoctrinating children as young at 10. Oh, and they also carry pink pistols. Of course.

At one point during the segment -- which was as hilarious as it was painful to watch -- O'Reilly asked incredulously, "Now, when they recruit the kids, are they indoctrinating them into homosexuality?"

To which Wheeler answered with the utmost certainty, "Yes. As a matter of fact, some of the kids have actually reported that they were forced into, you know, performing sex acts and doing sex acts with some of these people."

Thanks to the intrepid folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who were not satisfied to simply laugh off O'Reilly for the lunatic that he is, they did a little fact checking on his story and his source. Shockingly, the whole thing is crap.

As the Intelligence Report makes clear:

Nine-millimeter Glocks painted pink? Dykes taking over? More than 150 lesbian gangs in the Washington, D.C., area alone? These claims are, as Wheeler suggested, "very, very interesting." They're also very, very flimsy. Gaithersburg, Md., Detective Patrick Word, president of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Gang Investigators Network, an intelligence-sharing organization of 400 criminal justice professionals in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, said there is no evidence whatsoever of a lesbian gang epidemic in his region. "Our membership reports only one lesbian gang," Word told the Intelligence Report.

Sgt. Brett Parson, a member and former commander of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, also questioned Wheeler's numbers. "We have 150 to 175 total gangs in the D.C. area, and out of those only nine where the predominance of members are female," he said. "You simply can't make the jump that they are lesbians. I think it is fair to talk about violence and female gangs. But to sensationalize or marginalize a community by making a statement like that seems irresponsible."

What's also irresponsible is referring to Wheeler as a "crime analyst" and "detective" as O'Reilly did. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Wheeler is a member of Jericho City of Praise, "a conservative Christian megachurch in Landover, Md., whose leadership publicly advocates against equal rights for gays and lesbians."

And his professional credentials aren't much better. "Wheeler told the Report that he spent seven years in professional law enforcement before going to work as a corporate security officer for McDonald's Corp., a job he has since left. These days, Wheeler is a 'food defense specialist' for the American Institute of Baking. Just this spring, he publicly warned that the Big Mac is vulnerable to bioterrorist attacks at '250 points' during production."

The LGBT advocacy organization GLAAD went on the defensive and sent Rashad Robinson, their Senior Director of Media Programs, to face off against O'Reilly on his show. But of course Robinson got little chance to actually say anything. The organization did issue this statement:

The O'Reilly Factor segment essentially reported a national epidemic of lesbian gangs preying on young girls without offering one solid statistic or credible source. This type of inaccurate tabloid journalism perpetuates dangerous stereotypes about lesbians and feeds a climate of homophobia, anti-gay discrimination and violence. That's the real national epidemic, but not one you're likely to see reported with such zeal by Bill O'Reilly.

Perhaps next time GLAAD should send a lesbian. And she should be packing.

Tagged as: o'reilly, fox news, homophobia

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.