While there's plenty of well-deserved blame to go around for Penn State's handling of the horrific abuse scandal at their school, some conservatives have determined that there's a larger villain that deserves the lion's share of responsibility for what happened.

Opponents of equal rights for gays and lesbians often resort to the canard that tolerance of homosexuality damages the very fabric of our nation and does nebulous (though grave) harm to families and society as a whole.

Because their predictions of things like “anarchy” in New York in the event of the legalization of gay marriage never pan out, anti-gay activists are forced to make absurd leaps of logic in order to blame acceptance of homosexuality for a whole host of society's ills.

Enter Joseph Farah, editor of conservative website WorldNetDaily, who holds the impressive distinction of managing to stand out as a crackpot even among the fever swamps of far-right conservative online media.

In a WND column titled, “Penn State: A comfortable place for child rape,” Farah says, “There are new rules in effect regarding what types of sexual behavior is appropriate and lawful.” Farah posits that these “new rules” have moved “the lines between right and wrong sexual behavior” and that these “sudden moral changes ... may explain why our system failed the victimized children in the sex scandal at Penn State.”

The “new rules” Farah refers to are, predictably, the fact that homosexuality is no longer viewed as a “disorder” and a “perversion,” but is accepted (or, as Farah puts it, “considered a virtue”).

It was difficult to choose a chunk of this to excerpt because it is uniformly nuts, but here's a sample, wherein Farah blames the fear of “being accused of homophobia” for why Jerry Sandusky's alleged behavior went “unreported or unchallenged for so long.” He declares that “everyone knows why we're seeing an explosion of predatory sexual acts” and that we should all stop “acting like idiots”:

We may not fully understand the details of what Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky did or didn't do to young boys in locker rooms and showers, though he does admit inappropriate behavior. But the real question is how he did it for so long without consequences.

But now that being accused of homophobia is considered an offense, while practicing homosexuality is considered a virtue, should it really surprise anyone that such behavior would go unreported or unchallenged for so long?

In an age when government schools are actually teaching children how to perform homosexual acts and that there is nothing wrong with them, it would seem that an environment conducive for predators of children is being created under the watchful eye of the state and the media.

Remember also that Penn State is a public university. There is probably no institution more conscious of the new “sin” of homophobia than the American college campus. There are few imaginable offenses more grievous than homophobia in that environment. One pays a price for exhibiting any symptoms of this dread disease - especially in academia.

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What happened at Penn State is a tragedy. Worse, it's likely a series of tragedies that will impact the lives of people for years to come.

Let's stop acting like idiots by addressing symptoms of a much deeper problem when most everyone knows why we're seeing an explosion of predatory sexual acts on innocent children everywhere - in churches, in schools and in academia.

Farah's attempting to blur the lines between acceptance of relations between consenting parties and pedophilia/child rape would barely be worth mention if he was just a lone crank hollering in the wilderness, but he's not the only one attempting to make this argument.

In a radio appearance yesterday, Pat Buchanan managed to connect the Sandusky scandal to “homosexual marriage,” and WND published a separate piece this week linking the scandal to tolerance of homosexuality. Anti-gay groups like the National Organization for Marriage have also been using the scandal to try to link homosexuality to pedophilia.

Though Farah regularly pens incoherent, hateful nonsense like today's column, and despite the fact that he has spent the past few years making a very public fool of himself over President Obama's birth certificate, he's still welcome on Fox News. On Monday, Farah appeared with Sean Hannity to discuss the allegations against Herman Cain.

The chyron directed Fox viewers WND.com, where they can read about how tolerance of gays is to blame for Jerry Sandusky allegedly raping children and nobody at Penn State doing enough to stop it.