Fox News’ Laura Ingraham started her career by outing gay students
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Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham, who has hit the headlines for mocking a Parkland shooting survivor’s grades, started her reporting career by outing gay college students.
Ingraham took aim at 17-year-old anti-gun violence activist David Hogg last week, tweeting that he was “rejected by four colleges to which he applied and whines about it”.
Together with fellow students like Emma Gonzalez and Cameron Kasky, Hogg has prompted a tidal wave of public sentiment in favour of better gun regulation following the shooting in Florida, which left 17 dead.
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He responded to Ingraham’s taunt by calling on his followers to tell advertisers to pull their spots from Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle – and within a few days, more than a dozen companies had, including Nestlé, Hulu and Johnson & Johnson.
Ingraham then apologised, which Hogg branded as “not enough” because it was “an effort just to save your advertisers”.
He added: “I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight.”
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Ingraham is off the air this week, in a move which Fox said was preplanned.
It seems that this isn’t the first time the Fox News presenter has targeted young men.
In 1984, when Ingraham was editor of The Dartmouth Review, Dartmouth College’s unofficial newspaper, she sent a reporter to secretly record an anonymous support group for gay students.
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Ingraham then published a transcript of the Gay Students Association meeting – complete with the names of two students present – in the paper, which had a reputation for deriding black people, women and minorities, according to The New York Times.
The article detailed attendees describing their sexual experiences and sexual identities and named two officials of the association.
Ingraham defended outing students who did not want to go public with their sexuality at the time, saying it was “a freedom of the press issue, obviously.”
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Earlier this year, she had anti-LGBT lobbyist and President of the Catholic League Bill Donohue on her show to criticise a lesbian couple who were denied permission to foster a refugee child through a government-funded scheme based on their sexual orientation.
In 2016, Ingraham claimed that people would soon take up wearing adult diapers to avoid transgender people in bathrooms.
“They’re just not going to use the bathroom,” she told listeners of her radio show. “Adult diapers, diapers for everybody.
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“No one’s going to be going to the bathroom! You have little kids? There’s going to be no bathrooms. We’re just going to all wear Depends.
“Everyone will just be happy. Then you’ll be in your own bathroom. Everyone’s bathroom is just their own clothes, OK? So this is what we’re going to go to.”
