‘Homophobia doesn’t exist’ - Tory MEP
August 11th, 2009
Homophobia is a ‘propoganda device’ used to ‘denigrate and stigamatise those holding conventional opinions’, according to a Conservative MEP.
Roger Helmer, Conservative MEP for the East Midlands wrote the anti-gay rant on his blog Straight Talking while defending a Polish MEP accused of homophobia by the BBC, the Guardian and a recently-expelled Conservative MEP.
“Marriage means the union of a man and a woman, usually with the implicit potential of procreation. That is what the word means,” wrote Helmer, who regards himself as ‘liberal and tolerant on the question of homosexuality’.
“I have no problem with a same-sex couple setting up home together, but it devalues language — and the real institution of marriage — to call such an arrangement ‘marriage’.”
From attacking gay marriage, Helmer moves to attacking the concept of homophobia, the umbrella term for all prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people.
“‘Homophobia’ is not so much a word as a political agenda,” wrote Helmer.
“In psychiatry, a phobia is defined as an irrational fear. I have yet to meet anyone who has an irrational fear of homosexuals, or of homosexuality.
“So to the extent that the word has any meaning at all, it describes something which simply does not exist.
“‘Homophobia’ is merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions, which have been held by most people through most of recorded history.
“It is frightening evidence of the way in which political correctness is threatening our freedom.
“It is creating ‘thought crimes’, where merely to hold a conventional opinion is seen, in itself, to be unacceptable and reprehensible.”
[via The F Word]
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