WASHINGTON — Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) today tearfully held a press conference where she claimed LGBT activists pressured her into a sexual relationship with another woman against her will.

“The gays have had their sights set on me for quite a while,” she said through tears. “And last week, they got me.”

She said the pressure mounted after Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer vetoed SB 1062 last month. The bill would have allowed business to refuse service to gay people in the name of religious freedom. She claimed the veto illustrated how LGBT activists have “bullied” voters and politicians. “The gay community, they have so bullied the American people, and they’ve so intimidated politicians. The politicians fear them, so that they think they get to dictate the agenda everywhere,” she said. “And they’re not happy with gaining rights. Oh no, they are determined to make us all try the gay, if only for one night.”

According to Bachmann, when news of Brewer’s veto reached her office, a number of gay individuals set up vigil outside, chanting loudly and taunting the conservative politician. “They called me names and said I wasn’t a real woman until I’d had intimate relations with someone of my own gender,” she claimed. “I simply couldn’t take the abuse any more, so I allowed one of the gentler-looking women outside my door to enter my office and then… God help me, I just wanted them to stop calling me names.

“If only [Jan] Brewer hadn’t vetoed that bill,” she added.

Bachmann hopes that by coming out with her story, she’ll empower others to step forward and admit to being bullied by gay people. “I believe that tolerance is a two-way street and we need to respect everyone’s rights,” Bachmann said. “Right now, there’s a terrible intolerance afoot in the United States, and it’s against people who hold sincerely held religious beliefs that gay people are less than human and should be shunned.

“A true democracy would let people openly discriminate against gay people if they want to, not force them into sexual relationships they neither want nor fully understand.”