Alec Baldwin -- Still a Homophobe, Now a Liar Too!

Alec Baldwin insists he doesn't hate gays ... just "queens" ... and that's just the beginning of the mind-numbingly stupid explanation he just released in the wake of his homophobic Twitter rant.

Baldwin called up a reporter for The Gothamist today ... to address the backlash after he called for his fans to physically attack a "toxic little queen" reporter who wrote an article about his wife tweeting at James Gandolfini's funeral.

Here's what Baldwin had to say:

"The idea of me calling this guy a 'queen' and that being something that people thought is homophobic ... a queen to me has a different meaning. It’s somebody who’s just above. It doesn’t have any necessarily sexual connotations. To me a queen ... I know women that act queeny, I know men that are straight that act queeny, and I know gay men that act queeny. It doesn’t have to be a definite sexual connotation, or a homophobic connotation. To me those are people who think the rules don’t apply to them."