O'Reilly opposes “clustering” of not only gays -- but Mexicans, too

Written by Andrew Ironside

Published

During the July 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asserted that “despite the heated rhetoric” regarding immigration, “most Americans ... don't want to hurt any poor Mexican people. ... [T]hey want to know who they are. They want to know where they are, what they're doing. They don't want them clustering in neighborhoods and changing the tempo of the whole neighborhood.”

As Media Matters for America documented, O'Reilly has previously expressed concern over the “clustering” of gays and lesbians in public places. On the July 11 edition of his program, while discussing a gay pride event hosted by the San Diego Padres at Petco Park, O'Reilly argued that it is “insane” to “cluster” gay men and lesbians during a “hat giveaway for any kid under 12.” O'Reilly claimed that the problem with the event was “focusing in and putting more homosexuals into an area.” On July 12, O'Reilly responded to a viewer email pointing out that “kids are around gays every day” by stating, “But not thousands of them, sir. That can be confusing to children.”

Just as O'Reilly did not explain how many gay people a child can be around without becoming “confus[ed],” he did not clarify how many Mexicans it takes to “chang[e] the tempo of the whole neighborhood.”

From the July 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: The only reason the federal government would allow a situation to descend into the chaos that it's in is because big business profits from it. And the economy profits from it. And they look the other way.

But, you know, look, I think most Americans, despite the heated rhetoric on this issue, most people watching us right now, Mr. Bermudez, don't want to hurt any poor Mexican people. They don't want to hurt them.

You know, they want to know who they are. They want to know where they are, what they're doing. They don't want them clustering in neighborhoods and changing the tempo of the whole neighborhood. They don't want certainly crimes being committed by people here illegally. That can't happen. That's got to be zero tolerance there.

But most Americans are open to immigration. It's just the matter that we want to do it in an orderly fashion, in an orderly way. You don't disagree with that, do you?

ELIAS BERMUDEZ (Immigrants Without Borders founder and CEO): Not at all, sir.