Brody's Notes...'Legitimising Gay Marriage Is Like Legalising Child Abuse'

Wendy Francis  Photo Courtesy of The Age- Melbourne, Australia

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) AUG 9 | A candidate standing for election for Australia's Family First Party in the Australian State of Queensland, has angered voters and the LGBT community with a series of remarks made on her Twitter account yesterday. That candidate, Wendy Francis, compared legitimising gay marriage to “legalising child abuse," which provoked an angry reaction from the LGBT marriage lobby group Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby.

Senthorun Raj, policy and development coordinator for the group said in an interview with  Melbourne's newspaper, The Age, correspondent Ben Grubb:

"Comments which characterise same-sex families as promoting emotional abuse towards children is deeply, deeply frustrating and offensive. In Australia there over 4,380 children living in same-sex families, and to have children in those families be stigmatised by such comments, stigmatising their same-sex parents, disenfranchises those children and effectively promotes attitudes of homophobia that will continue to marginalise and ostracize children and parents living in same-sex families.”

“Children in homosexual relationships are subject to emotional abuse. Legitimising gay marriage is like legalising child abuse,” Francis said in one Twitter message which has since been deleted. Grubb also reported that the comment, which also came in a statement calling on  the Labor Party and the parliamentary Coalition to “end the gay marriage debate”, remained on her website when viewed at 9:30pm Sunday night. It was later removed from her site at around 10pm. Thousands of Twitter users blasted Francis for her comments after they were made Sunday on the social networking site.