Dutch councillor thrown out of his party for calling gays ‘abnormal’

Illustrated rainbow pride flag on a white background.

A local councillor in the Netherlands has been thrown out of his party for describing homosexuality as “abnormal”.

Jamal Nouhi, a Labour councillor for Breda City Council, made the comments in response to calls from the Human Rights Watch for Morocco to “stop prosecuting and jailing people for their intimate behaviour with other consenting adults,” following the conviction of several men.

Writing on his Facebook page, Nouhi said: “Promote everything abnormal until it becomes normal, as ‘old fashioned and repressive’, works every time… Morocco has Islam as state religion… respect our land, people and culture or get lost.”

He also compared homosexuality to paedophilia, writing: “What if we set up a Peoples Rights Watch and demanded that all paedofiles [sic] be accepted by Europe. Or would demand that a European country implement some kind of Moroccan Islamic law. What then?”

Local party leader Henk van der Velder said the comments were “shocking and inappropriate for [the Party]”.

Nouhi was urged to distance himself from the comments, but instead released a statement saying he had attempted to shock people by asking how people in the Netherlands would feel if foreign nations attempted to impose their values on them.