'Don't Say Gay' Stacey Campfield Compares Gay Sex To Shooting Heroin

In promoting a new version of his infamous “Don't Say Gay” bill, Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield has compared gay sex to injecting heroin.

Campfield's controversial bill, which seeks to outlaw the discussion of sexual minorities in Tennessee's public schools before the ninth grade, returned last month with a new name, the Classroom Protection Act (SB234), and a new mandate: Counselors who speak to students about the subject must inform the students' parents that such counseling has taken place.

In an interview with TMZ.com, Campfield defended his proposal.

“If they're going to engage in homosexual acts anyway, why not teach them how to protect themselves from [HIV]?” he was asked.

“You know, you could say the same thing about kids who are shooting heroin,” Campfield answered. “We need to show them the best ways to shoot up. No, we don't. Why do we have to hypersexualize little children? Why can't we just let little kids be little kids for a while? Why do we have to have little kids be ...”

“Do you believe in sex education period?” TMZ interrupted.

“If you can show me where it works, great.”

Campfield also called gay rights activists “the biggest bullies in the world.” (Watch the entire segment at TMZ.com.)

Writing at ThinkProgress.com, Zack Ford called Campfield's views “narrow.”

“Campfield's understanding of homosexuality is limited to the performance of sex acts,” Ford wrote. “It seems beyond his comprehension that those 'little kids' might have same-sex parents. He has no sympathy for those children who might realize at a very young age that they are not the same as all the other kids. Discussing the existence of gay people does nothing to 'sexualize' young people, whatever that would even mean. It's no surprise that the TMZ crew had to wrestle with the idea that Campfield had ever been elected; his understanding of the world around is severely narrow.”

Opponents of the bill, which Campfield first introduced eight years ago in the House, have also noted that Tennessee schools currently do not formally address the topic.