Theresa May’s adviser compared gay sex to incest
Roger Scruton, philosopher and political scientist (MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty)
Prime Minister Theresa May is being urged to sack her new housing czar after it emerged that he said homosexuality was “not normal,” denied homophobia was real and compared gay couples to “incestuous liaisons.”
Multiple Labour Party and Liberal Democrat MPs have called for May to fire conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who Housing Scretary James Brokenshire appointed on Saturday (November 3) to chair the government’s new commission on building “better and beautiful” homes, BuzzFeed News and The Guardian have reported.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s A Point of View in 2015, the now-74-year-old claimed that homophobia was “invented.”
Prime Minister Theresa May (CHARLES MCQUILLAN/AFP/Getty)
He said: “The orthodox liberal view is that homosexuality is innate and guiltless. Like the Islamists, the advocates of this view have invented a phobia with which to denounce their opponents.
“Deviate in the smallest matter from the orthodoxy, and you will be accused of homophobia.”
And in an article for The Telegraph from 2007 entitled “This ‘right’ for gays is an injustice to children,” Scruton wrote that being gay was “not normal” and said it was part of a “moral inversion that is infecting modern society.”
Scruton wrote that being gay was “not normal” (Ian Gavan/Getty)
Scruton said: “Every now and then, we wake up to the fact that, although homosexuality has been normalised, it is not normal.
“Our acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, of same-sex couples, and of the gay scene has not eliminated our sense that these are alternatives to something, and that it is the other thing that is normal.”
Arguing against gay adoption and anti-discrimination laws, he said that adoption “means providing the child with a father and a mother. Anything else would be an injustice to the child and an abuse of his innocence.”
Scruton added that “it is no more an act of discrimination to exclude gay couples than it is to exclude incestuous liaisons or communes of promiscuous ‘swingers.’
Theresa May has been told to fire Roger Scruton (John Stillwell – WPA Pool/Getty)
“Indeed, the implication that adoption is entirely a matter of the ‘rights’ of the prospective parents shows the moral inversion that is infecting modern society.”
He continued: “We are being asked to overlook all that we know about the fragility of homosexual partnerships, about the psychological needs of children, and about the norms that still prevail in our schools and communities, for the sake of an ideological fantasy.”
In 2015, he wrote on Spiked that gay people had an “obsession with the young.”
He said that “male homosexuality, because it’s not constrained by a woman’s need to fix a man down, is hugely promiscuous—the statistics are quite horrifying.
“And there’s also the obsession with the sexual organs rather than the relationship, this vector towards phallicism, the obsession with the young.”
Has Roger Scruton targeted other minorities?
As well as his comments about gay people, Scruton has also said that Islamophobia was a “nasty label” created to “hide the truth” and, in a speech available on his website, has talked about “the extensive networks around the Soros Empire,” referring to Jewish philanthropist George Soros, who has been the target of antisemitic conspriacy theories and a pipe bomb.
In a statement posted to his Twitter account, Scruton denied being Islamophobic or antisemitic, saying that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
Roger Scruton responded to the allegations on Twitter (roger_scruton/twitter)
He did not address the backlash to his comments about gay people in the statement.
Prominent politicians call for Scruton to leave role
Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Shadow Communities Secretary Andrew Gwynne said: “Nobody holding those views has a place in modern democracy.
“The Prime Minister needs to finally show some leadership and sack Scruton with an investigation into how he was appointed in the first place.”
Liberal Democrat housing spokesperson Wera Hobhouse said that “Scruton should never have been employed and the PM should ask him to resign,” while Labour MP Wes Streeting called his appointment “an appalling error of judgment” and said May should “sack him immediately.”
It is not clear why Scruton’s comments about gay people did not stop him from being appointed, since they were not hidden.
Students at the St Andrews University complained about his stances in 2010 after Scruton was given a full-time post at the institution.
The university’s student association said at the time that Scruton had told a newspaper in 2007 that homosexuality was “not normal” and has made similar arguments in two of his books.
