This UKIP politician just blamed same-sex marriage for drugs, murder and violence
Tom Aldridge (tauntondeane.gov.uk)
A UKIP councillor has said that if same-sex marriage were abolished, murders, drug abuse and violent crime “would just disappear”.
Tom Aldridge, a UKIP councillor for the Lyngford ward in Somerset, south-west England, made the comments during a public meeting last week.
Current UKIP leader Henry Bolton (Getty)
The highest homicide rate in the last 50 years came in 2002-2003, when neither civil partnerships nor same-sex marriage was legal in England and Wales.
Nevertheless, the 87-year-old, who is the only UKIP representative in the borough, blamed the legalisation of equal marriage four-and-a-half years ago for a wide variety of problems.
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He said: “It’s probably not a very popular observation, but it’s simply this: that long-term, if we could get back to marriages being the sort of standard, and I’m talking about heterosexual marriage as the standard, throughout the country, as it was say 50 years ago, most of these social behaviour and drug problems and all the rest of them would just disappear.”
Speaking to the Somerset County Gazette, Aldridge stood by his hateful views after the meeting.
“It’s simple really,” he said.
“Going back to after World War II, marriage was the norm – our behaviour now is not,” Aldridge continued.
“Society was better, more cohesive.
“Family, meaning a mother, father and children, was the basis of society, marriage holds it together.”
He then referred to an 18-year-old article to support his rant.
“An article by Charles Murray in 2000 in the Sunday Times explained it,” said Aldridge.
“We were a more civilised country. We didn’t have an ‘underclass’, with that meaning we didn’t have high rates of male unemployment, violent crime or illegitimacy.”
He was then questioned over whether same-sex marriages could serve the same effect on society, in his opinion, as heterosexual marriages.
“How can it?” he responded. “It’s about reproducing.”
Some might say that marriages are about love – but not Aldridge.
When it was pointed out to him that same-sex spouses can and have children through adoption and treatments like IVF, he said: “That’s rubbish.”
He then said that the concept of same-sex couples was responsible for children being killed.
“In most cases of children being mistreated, or in some cases, murdered, it is the ‘irregular’ relationships, the ‘reconstructed’ families,” he said.
His party, which has no MPs, is in crisis.
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As leader Henry Bolton clings on to his position, UKIP is reportedly facing bankruptcy.
It was already more than £380,000 in debt before last year’s general election, according to The Mail Online.
