Apr 11, 2008  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

Gay and transgender activists are denouncing mainstream media coverage of Thomas Beatie, a transgender man who is pregnant and appeared last week on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show.

The April 5 episode of “Red Eye” on Fox News Channel was particularly over the top.

“Twenty years ago, this person would have been traveling in a carnival — I’m sorry people would be paying a dollar,” Greg Gutfeld, host of the show, said of Beatie.

“I hope when he pushes that baby out, it is the worst experience of his life — I hope the blood vessels pop in his eyes and I hope it is so painful,” added panelist Tracy Byrnes.

By the end of the segment, Byrnes, a financial writer and pundit, was advocating death for Beatie.

“It’s fine and well when you’re only six months pregnant,” Byrnes said of pregnancy pains. “It’s months seven, eight and nine that you want to kill yourself, and I hope that that’s what happens here.”

Panelist Bill Schulz referred to Beatie as “he-she” and said he knew enough about gay culture to give a detailed description of transgender sex, which he said he learned from “a friend who was an open-minded actress.”

Schulz also pretended to know the ins and outs of hormone treatment, claiming the baby risked deformation because Beatie was previously on testosterone treatment.

“This little ewok that she’s about to crap out might even have a third eye,” Schulz said.

“O’Reilly Factor” guest Jane Hall said that she didn’t think Beatie was doing anything immoral and that his interview with Oprah was less offensive than the media interviewing pimps in the wake of the Eliot Spitzer scandal. But host Bill O’Reilly hinted that exposure to a gay or transgender person will corrupt children.

“You imagine a poor kid getting born into that family,” O’Reilly said of Beatie.

The morning crew on MSNBC couldn’t discuss Beatie without a chorus of giggles.

“I’m not going to look at this,” said former Republican lawmaker Joe Scarborough. “I really do feel sick.”

Even mainstream journalists like Scarborough’s sidekick, Today Weekend host Mika Brzezinski, felt comfortable showing her revulsion.

“I’m going to be sick. I’m going to be sick,” said Brzezinski, who called the news of Beatie’s pregnancy “not only stupid and useless, but quite frankly, disgusting.”

“The media are making a huge deal out of not much, but [coverage has] been sensationalistic and tabloidish,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “This is not the first time [a transgender man has become pregnant], and it’s not like it’s a major medical mystery here.”

The overall coverage of Beatie’s pregnancy has been “embarrassingly amateurish,” Keisling said.

“The premise of the media coverage is circus-like,” she said, adding that she was not surprised to see Fox News leading the charge.

“The whole point of Fox News is to make stuff up and feed red meat to their viewers,” Keisling said.