It’s 3:30 in the AM Pacific time, and I was packing to leave for LAX (I’m in the airport now), and I was tuned in to MSNBC to Morning Joe, where Tucker Carlson was subbing and they were discussing last night’s HRC/LOGO forum.

Brad Luna of HRC was interviewed on the show, and Tucker went into a — excuse me — completely batsh*t dialog with Luna about transgenders and gender reassignment surgery. Carlson was nearly apoplectic and grabbing his “boys” at the thought of someone wanting to transition (clearly only MTF in his mind) and having surgery to remove male genitalia. It came up in the context of John Edwards answering a question about whether he would support a staff member who informed him that they wanted to undergo gender reassignment.

Brad tried ably to place the matter into context, that someone willing to put up with the potential ridicule and rejection to transition to a different gender has already spent a lot of time thinking about reassignment surgery, and that the removal of that part of themselves is not viewed as self-mutilation, as Tucker believes, but as corrective surgery.

Needless to say, logic did not seem to penetrate Mr. Tucker’s hysterical mind and his vivid images of a scalpel coming anywhere near his testicles.

Thumbs up to Brad Luna for making it through that insane interview.

They had a lot of fun replaying Governor Richardson’s meltdown when he was asked about whether being gay is a choice or biological. I don’t think the earnest damage control by his campaign is helping them out of this pickle.

They seemed to view the question Melissa Etheridge posed as part of some orthodoxy in the LGBT community that being gay is not a choice, and any candidate that believes this is not following some sort of LGBT party line. No, the issue last night was that she believed that the governor misheard the question, based on his gay-positive record, which is why she restated it. The fact that he missed an opportunity to clarify at the time is what caused the matter to spin out of control.

The obvious question that seemed to escape Tucker Carlson and the Morning Joe gang is it’s clear they don’t consider whether their (presumed) heterosexuality was a choice they made. It’s fascinating to see that blind spot playing itself out in the discussion. That said, it could have opened up a thoughtful conversation about the fluidity of sexuality generally — that people tend to want to box our sexuality into fixed orientations, when that may not be true for everyone on the sexual continuum. That doesn’t mean, however, that the vast majority of gay and straight folks don’t know their orientation early on.

Related:
*  Behind the scenes at the HRC/LOGO presidential forum…
* Liveblogging the HRC/LOGO Visible Vote 08 Forum
* Winners and losers at the HRC/LOGO VisibleVote08 forum