DUBUQUE, IA - AUGUST 25: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) listens as Sam Clovis speaks at a press conference at the Grand River Center on August 25, 2015 in Dubuque, Iowa. Clovis recently quit his position as Iowa campaign chairman for Rick Perry. Trump leads most polls in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Trump has nominated a former talk show host who linked homosexuality to paedophilia for a top role within his administration.

The Republican billionaire named Sam Clovis, the former host of radio talk show ‘Impact With Sam Clovis’, to his a role as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture.

Clovis, the former national co-chair of the Trump-Pence campaign and a White House adviser, was exposed as a homophobe by CNN’s K-File today.

K-File found evidence dating from 2012 to 2014 that Clovis had claimed that gay rights reforms would lead to legal paedophilia.

In one clip, he claimed: “Someone who engages in LGBT behaviour… as far as we know, LGBT behaviour is a choice they make, so we’re being asked to provide Constitutional protections for behaviour, a choice in behaviour as opposed to a primary characteristic.

“There’s no equivalency there between the civil rights issue associated between those protected classes and the civil rights of someone who engages in a particular behaviour.

“Follow the logic, if you engage in a particular behaviour, what also becomes protected? If we protect LGBT behaviour, what other behaviours are we going to protect? Are we going to protect paedophilia?

“Are we going to protect polyamorous marriage relationships? Are we going to protect people who have fetishes? What’s the logical extension of this?

“It can’t be that we’re going to protect LGBT and then we’ll pull up the ladder. That’s not going to happen, it defies logic. We’re not thinking the consequences of these decisions through.”

He added: “I think it’s a logical extension of thought. And if you cannot follow the logic then you’re denying your in denial.”

In blog posts, Clovis also claimed that business should be free to not hire gay people.

He claimed: “Businesses and their owners should be able to make decisions about who is employed if hiring people who do not behave in accordance with some deeply held religious belief system is at issue.

“Just as the government should not force business owners or enterprises to provide contraceptives or morning-after pills because of religious beliefs, the government should not be in charge of hiring practices, either. Religious freedom, perhaps the most fundamental of all protected freedoms, must be free of government interference.”

He added: “What seems the most troubling about extending the definition of marriage to same-sex couples is that it will be difficult to stop with this revised definition.

“Is the LGBT community wanting to stop the marriage arrangement at any two consenting adults? This is illogical. If society chooses to alter the definition of marriage, how can there be a line drawn at two adults?

“What is to say that polyamorous arrangements should not be included? What about other relationships?

“If that is the goal of the LGBT community leadership, then the reasons for rearranging the traditional definition is far more nefarious than just making a small segment of the population feel better.”

When challenged about his views, a spokesperson for Clovis bizarrely told CNN: “The Supreme Court settled the issue in 2015.”

Personally we don’t remember the Supreme Court ruling on whether homosexuality leads to paedophilia, but we’ll take his word for it.

Drew Anderson, Director of News and Rapid Response at GLAAD said: “Sam Clovis’ nomination further emphasizes just how President Trump is willing to do about anything possible to make his administration the most anti-LGBTQ in recent memory.

“His words fly in the face of American values and should be disqualifying for any person who wishes to represent the federal government.”

Clovis is far from the first anti-LGBT nominee for a position in the White House.

Trump’s Army Secretary nominee previously quit after senior Democrats and Republicans both voiced concern about his long record of homophobia.

Donald Trump had been attempting to replace Obama’s openly gay nominee Eric Fanning with an anti-gay Tennessee Republican lawmaker, Mark Green.

A number of disturbing allegations later came to light about Mr Green. He is on-the-record claiming that being transgender is a “disease”, while in an unearthed radio clip he rants about trans people before vowing to “crush” evil.

Mr Green also described civil rights protections for LGBT people as an example of “tyrannical government”, and encouraged Tennessee to defy the US Supreme Court and deny gay couples the right to marry.

Meanwhile, many of the people in the most senior roles in the Trump cabinet also have anti-LGBT views.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions opposes civil rights protections for gay people, while HUD Secretary Ben Carson has described equal marriage as a Marxist plot.