After being asked to (rightly) condemn the comments of an imam who suggested gay people should be put to death, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was asked on Q&A on Monday whether he’d ever condemned the homophobic comments of some of his own backbench, including Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi and Liberal National MP George Christensen.
Turnbull was evasive in his response but effectively said he had had words with his colleagues when making such comments. That was enough to send Bernardi into a tizzy, writing on his “Common Sense” blog that no one had been able to substantiate the slur that he is a homophobe with “any factual evidence”.
Cory, we are ever helpful and have provided factual evidence herewith:
When he argued against removing discriminatory pieces of legislation in 2008:
“Is it fair that same-sex couples be treated the same as married couples? I say no … It is offensive in that it seeks to make the treatment in Commonwealth law of same-sex couples as virtually identical to that of married couples … I suspect that, as much of the same-sex literature suggests, the ultimate goal of the same-sex lobby is indeed to destroy marriage by defining it out of existence. And we in this place are being asked to contribute to the demise.”
When he made a slippery slope fallacy argument that suggested allowing same-sex couples to marry would lead to bestiality:
“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship … There are even some creepy people out there … [who] say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals.”
When a constituent emailed him about Safe Schools, Bernardi said the program “bullies heterosexual children into submission for the gay agenda” and told the constituent to “grow up”. He calls a program designed to teach kids empathy for LGBTI students “indocrination”.
We will leave the final word to Bill Shorten:
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