Hartmann confronts anti-gay leader: Do closeted gays run your movement?

On Russia Today TV's The Big Picture Thursday, progressive radio host Thom Hartmann confronted Family Research Institute chairman Dr. Paul Cameron and asked him an unusually pointed question: "Does it concern you that many of your colleagues in the anti-gay movement may actually be closeted gays?"

"Um, no," Cameron replied. "Very few of them are homosexually interested. First of all, um... Most people are not interested in homosexuality. There's not at all. A few homosexuals like to say -- and they've been saying this now for at least the last seven years -- almost everybody is bisexual, maybe some homosexual..."

"I've never heard anybody say that," Hartmann replied.

Cameron went on to claim that biologist Alfred Kinsey, whose groundbreaking research pioneered the study of human sexuality, "was gay" and "pushed that idea," making his scientific findings somehow less valid. "Most of the homosexual leadership... have pushed that idea," he added. "But it's not true!"

Cameron didn't provide any source or research to support his claim, so interested viewers may just have to take his word for it.

But a wise observer may wish to note that a recently published study by the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara, found that homophobia "is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires."

“Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves,” the study’s lead author, Netta Weinstein, explained.

And that's what Hartmann keyed into.

"Who's going to sit around all day long and think, 'Oh my God, there's gays out there! There's gays out there! We can't let them get married!' And just, you know, commit their lives to stopping gay [marriage]," Hartmann said. "I don't think about it that much. It seems to me that if somebody's really obsessed with it, maybe we should wonder."

"Well, you can wonder about it all you want," Cameron replied.

This video was broadcast by Russia Today on Thursday, April 12, 2012.

Post updated April 13 at 12:42 PM EST.