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This interview with Stacey Campfield appeared on The David Pakman Show on January 30, 2012.
David Pakman: Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield, Republican from Knoxville, is back on the show. He made some news last week when he did an interview with Sirius XM’s Michelangelo Signorile. Senator, you made a number of claims during that interview, including that it was virtually impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex. You also said that homosexuality is very… is dangerous. Tell me, what exactly is harmful about homosexuality? That maybe is a good place to start.
Stacey Campfield: Sure. Well, the act of homosexuality, I mean, if you’re talking about anal sex, it’s very… and I’m sorry if this is too graphic for some people, but it is very risky behavior.
David: OK.
Campfield: You have a very high rate of catching disease from it. Vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman, your odds are actually… and I’ve got links on my blog at www.Lastcar.Blogspot.com, I have links that say that the odds of someone actually catching AIDS from vaginal intercourse, for just an average person, not a high-risk person, but an average person, are about one in 5 million.
Now, obviously, if you’re having sex with an IV drug user, a homosexual, bisexuals, hemophiliacs, people who are from Africa, the continent of Africa, not Africans per se, but, you know, people actually from there, your odds are obviously going to go up.
David: Of course.
Campfield: But in America, your odds of catching it through heterosexual contract… contact with non-high-risk people is about one in 5 million.
David: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, because you’re saying something which is very common with a lot of I guess anti-gay individuals, which is, when you ask them what’s bad about homosexuality, they obsess about two men having sex. And it’s incredible to me, because homosexuality is something that exists in, you know, as I’m sure you know, thousands of animal species across, you know, tens of millions of years, if you believe the Earth has been around that long. Why does the focus about homosexuality in a moral sense become about two men having sex? How can we take that and say homosexuality is immoral or harmful? I don’t understand that. Why is the fixation on anal sex?
Campfield: Well, obviously, like I said, because first of all, it’s not a healthy lifestyle. It’s very dangerous. The average homosexual, for a variety of reasons, has about… a lifespan of about 24 years shorter than the average person.
David: Yeah, well, you got that from…
Campfield: If you’re a smoker…
David: You got that from Paul Cameron, who’s been widely discredited. That statistic has been widely discredited. And I mean, if you got it from somewhere other than Paul Cameron, let me know, but I looked into that, and that’s just flatly not true.
Campfield: Yes, that’s actually… there’s a… statistics for insurance companies who do that sort of thing. And when they always try and discredit it, they always say well, what about older men in monogamous relationships?
David: Yeah.
Campfield: Well, I hate to say it, but most homosexual relationships… well, actually, I shouldn’t say most. Many homosexual relationships are not monogamous, they’re much more plurific, I guess is the word, and with their… with what they do in their life.
David: How do you know that?
Campfield: Well, there’s statistics on it. And actually, if you look at where you get a lot of this information, you can pull this information up, look at insurance statistics. If you are a homosexual man, your insurance rates go through the roof, and the reason is because you have so much shorter a lifespan.
David: Which insurance rates, health insurance?
Campfield: Life insurance. They’re called the… I believe it’s… not annuity rates, but there are… and by the way, you mentioned some other things about it has been… it’s been in the animal kingdom forever and ever.
David: Yeah.
Campfield: You know, I tend to disagree with that. I’ve never seen, you know, and again, I hate to use graphic language…
David: Sure.
Campfield: … but I’ve never seen or known of an animal sodomizing another animal.
David: So let me see if I understand: what you’re saying is that the idea that homosexuality has existed in a percentage of thousands of species over the history of time, to you it doesn’t strike you as true because you’ve never seen two animals having anal sex. Do I understand that correctly, Sir?
Campfield: You know, no, I just, I haven’t seen that. I can’t attest for it, because I’ve never seen it.
David: Oh, you’ve never seen two animals having sex, therefore there is not homosexuality in the animal kingdom. I don’t want to misstate…
Campfield: No, not that I’ve seen. I know that animals, they sort of, I hate to say “fake it”, I guess, whatever, to show dominance over one another, but I’ve never actually seen one animal sodomize another animal, no.
David: So in other words, the homosexual activity you’ve observed in animals seems to be almost like an S&M dominance type of thing, but is not evidence to you of actual homosexuality in any other species other than humans, is that right?
Campfield: You know, I can’t speak for what an animal’s thinking in their head or in their heart, no. And I don’t think anybody else can.
David: Well, you just said, you think… you see it as a dominance thing. That implies you know the intent, doesn’t it? How would you know it’s dominance?
Campfield: Well, that’s what most people have said, that it’s more of a show of dominance, when they do that, they’re showing dominance over another animal.
David: Which… who’s “most people”?
Campfield: Well, if you want to get online, I guess you could look that up yourself.
David: You’ve called anti-gay bullying “a lark”. What did you mean by that?
Campfield: We already have it. Homosexuals are covered by anti-bullying laws, there are anti-bullying laws already. To say that we need new bullying laws is, you know, we need to have special groups come in to talk to children about homosexuality because of bullying is not really true.
David: So your concern is what, that somebody would come into schools and tell children what, that homosexuality exists? That it’s OK? What’s your concern… you know, what’s the nitty-gritty of the concern?
Campfield: I just don’t think that’s an issue we need to be talking about, the principles of it, I don’t think that’s something we need to be talking about in our schools. Our schools in Tennessee were ranked about 46th in the nation, in a nation that is slipping from, we used to be at the top of the world.
David: Right.
Campfield: Really, now we’re slipping down. You know, we’re not studying… we’re not even passing math, science, a lot of our major things. We’re having problems getting through that, and yet we’ve decided… or, some people would really like for teachers to go out there and start saying let’s talk to you about the complex life of homosexuals, or sexuality.
David: Well, it’s interesting you mention that.
Campfield: And here’s what I may think, even though… even though there may not be… teachers are not psychologists, they’re not psychiatrists, they are not… I don’t think they’re someone who knows what every child in the classroom may be prepared to hear about these issues. I just don’t think that’s appropriate for very young children.
David: So should they also not talk about heterosexual marriages? Maybe that’s not something children are prepared to hear about. If they are not psychologists, who are they to say well, we’ve determined they can hear about heterosexual marriages, but not homosexual marriages? It seems very arbitrary, Senator.
Campfield: Well, actually, we don’t teach that. Actually, and my bill would take care of that, because my bill, all it talks about is natural reproduction.
David: What’s your reaction to our home state of Massachusetts here, which was the first to legalize gay marriage and has very strong anti-bullying and other anti-discrimination legislation related to homosexuality? We’re doing incredibly well education-wise. What’s going on?
Campfield: I don’t think the two are connected.
David: Oh.
Campfield: I really don’t. I think, you know, you may be doing great with education, there may be other factors there that hey, maybe Tennessee wants to model, but is it homosexuality that’s something we have to… education on homosexuality, does that somehow make your educational system better? I haven’t seen any proof of that.
Like I said, we passed some great legislation talking about bullying. I don’t think anybody should be bullied, no matter what lifestyle they have. Fat kids get bullied, skinny kids get bullied, small kids get bullied, big kids get bullied, everybody. We need to protect everyone.
David: And when you say “lifestyle”, you mean that somebody just chooses to be homosexual? When you say “lifestyle”, you mean someone chooses to live a homosexual lifestyle, is that right?
Campfield: Excuse me?
David: When you say “lifestyle”, am I right to hear that you’re saying somebody who is homosexual has chosen that lifestyle?
Campfield: Well, I mean, I don’t… the activity I think is a choice. We are human beings, so we have a choice over what we do with ourselves, so they… someone chooses to have sex, or… yeah, I’d say that’s pretty much about right.
David: OK. Hey, last thing, I know you have to go because you have another interview coming, is it true yesterday you were kicked out of the Bistro at the Bijou on Gay Street by owner Martha Boggs because she didn’t like your anti-gay stances? Is that true?
Campfield: Well, yeah, it is true. She asked me to leave.
David: Yeah.
Campfield: That’s unfortunate, that some people, you know, we can’t sit down and talk about issues. But, you know, it’s always funny, I always say liberals are the most open-minded people to different points of view, until someone actually has a different point of view, and then they sort of freak out and don’t know how to handle people with different points of view. Some people have said, you know…
David: So in a sense, you… we might say you might’ve… you were unfairly discriminated against? Would you say that?
Campfield: Well, some people have said that, you know, the civil rights… my civil rights were violated if I were to base it on my religious beliefs… base my views on my religious beliefs, because I would… I would be covered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but I haven’t really said that. I’m not real big on… I’m not a big religious person, so…
David: Right, but… so maybe, I guess… I guess you’re getting a sense for how homosexuals feel.
Campfield: What?
David: I guess you’re getting a little bit of a sense for how homosexual people feel when they’re discriminated against, maybe, Senator?
Campfield: Well, you know, I’ll be honest with you, I would not frequent a place that said we’re not going to serve homosexuals at a restaurant. I wouldn’t go there.
David: You wouldn’t? OK.
Campfield: No, I would not. If someone says hey, I’m not going to serve homosexuals, I don’t think we should be discriminating based on that. I don’t think that’s a valid reason.
David: You know, Senator, I think that’s the best thing we… that’s the one thing we agree on the most from this interview. Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield, Republican from Knoxville. I will let you go, I know you have that other interview going. Thank you so much for joining us.
Campfield: No problem, take care.