O'Reilly: Gays can be equated with Al-Qaeda

[nclib]

Lunar, O'Reilly was just doing a reducto ad absurdam technique.

Not an O'Reilly fan, but this was likely what he was doing, not equating them. Perhaps similar to:

Teenager: Can I drink alcohol at the party?
Parent: No.
Teenager: Jimmy's doing it.
Parent: If Jimmy jumped off a cliff, would you?

That said, in this context I'm not sure what point O'Reilly was making about gays and the ad.

[nclib]

Lunar, O'Reilly was just doing a reducto ad absurdam technique.

Not an O'Reilly fan, but this was likely what he was doing, not equating them. Perhaps similar to:

Teenager: Can I drink alcohol at the party?
Parent: No.
Teenager: Jimmy's doing it.
Parent: If Jimmy jumped off a cliff, would you?

That said, in this context I'm not sure what point O'Reilly was making about gays and the ad.

But would "reaching out to all of France, including the gays, so that we sell more of our product" prompt the question "would you reach out to terrorists then?"  

The idea of "reaching out to all of the French" doesn't spark the air of illogic that "Oh, I did it just because Jimmy did it" does.

I mean, if, say, O'Reilly was questioning a McDonalds spokesmen about their Spanish-language ads on New York subway trains or on English-language channels (both of which exist), and the McD's spokesmen said "we reach out to everybody," would "would you reach out to terrorists?" really be on the same level as your example of "I drank because Jimmy did it"?

So while I may have overreacted, I feel that's a poor counterexample.

I think "equating" is the correct verb to use here.

Not disagreeing with your explanation. Just saying that that was what O'Reilly was trying to do. Certainly he considers gays undesirables of society.