Australia: Victoria Attorney General to give welcome address at anti-gay conference
The Attorney General of Victoria, state of Australia, is to address an international anti-gay conference in Melbourne next month.
Robert Clark is set to deliver an opening address at the World Congress of Families (WCF), which refers to itself as “pro-family”, and campaigns against porn, abortion and gay rights, among other issues.
The Guardian reports that the conference will also see speeches by WCF vice president Larry Jacobs, who supported the introduction of a 2013 law in Russia banning the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations”. Jacobs said it was a “great idea” to stop gays “from corrupting children.”
On announcing a conference in the US state of Utah earlier this month, Jacobs said: “Same-sex marriage is just the most recent issue that’s come out of the sexual revolution and the radical sexual left, which would like to focus on individual sexual pleasure as the ultimate human goal.”
Other speakers at the event have been known to compare homosexuality with paedophilia.
A spokesman for Clark told the Guardian: “The attorney general is welcoming an international conference to Melbourne on behalf of the government. Delivering a welcome address does not necessarily imply support for particular speakers or their topics.”
The event’s convener, Babette Francis, said: “Homosexuality isn’t even on the program… It’s not anti-gay, we’re not anti-homosexual men and women at all. We recognise certain disadvantages and problems with the lifestyle, one of the problems being that … for the three monotheistic religions, the actual physical practice of homosexuality is a sin. That’s a fact.”
The event was originally intended for Moscow, but was moved to Melbourne after the Crimean crisis earlier this year.
