Far-right leader Pauline Hanson says equal marriage activists want to destroy mums and dads
Australian anti-gay politician Pauline Hanson has accused gay people of wanting to remove the words ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ from the language.
The right-wing Senator also said she would ignore a ‘yes’ vote in the non-binding postal vote, which started yesterday as ballots were sent out to 16 million citizens.
Speaking in Parliament, the One Nation leader used the common ‘No’ campaign tactic of scaremongering by conjuring up extreme social changes which they say could be prompted by a Yes vote.
“Have we considered the children?” she asked.
“What may come of this is that kids go to school and [teachers] say: ‘Look, I want you to draw a picture of mum and dad.’
“And then ‘Yes’ are going to come and say: ‘Sorry, you can no longer call that parent mum or dad, because it is going to offend the children who don’t have a mum or dad,” she alleged.
“So is it going to be: ‘Well you must call that person by Peter or Anne or John, and there’s no longer mums or dads?”
She asked equal marriage activists: “Why won’t you try and compromise?”
Hanson followed up this baseless exercise in creative thinking with a pre-emptive denial of the postal vote’s result – if it doesn’t go her way.
“I feel it’s a sham, it’s farcical and it’s a waste of money,” she said about the vote, according to sbs.com.au.
The postal vote will cost up to $122 million.
Hanson sparked controversy last month when she proposed attaching a vote on banning religious face coverings to the same-sex marriage postal vote.
She even pulled a stunt by sitting in the Australian parliament wearing a face covering, only to remove it before making a speech against the concept.
Her party also faced a string of scandals earlier this year over candidates with extreme views.
Richard Eldridge, a One Nation candidate in Perth, called gay marriage “the poof proof certificate or the licker letter of law.”
He also referred to gay relationships as “poo games”.
Michelle Meyers, a Legislative Assembly candidate for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in Western Australia, made the news by claiming “Norwegian homosexuals” are behind a “mind control program” based on strategies “developed by the Soviets and then the Nazis”.
The candidate, pictured multiple times with party leader Pauline Hanson, claimed on social media that Nazi mind control is the reason why “even some Christians are being swayed by the gender industry’s pitch and push 4 same sex ‘marriage’ and acceptance of fake families”.
In January, the party was forced to drop a local candidate in Queensland after she claimed gay people were “abnormal” and needed medical treatment.
However, Hanson stood by another candidate who linked gay people to paedophiles.