Anti-gay activists in Australia to rally at LGBT Holocaust memorial
(Facebook/Nick Folkes)
A far-right group is planning to hold a “Straight Lives Matter” protest against same-sex marriage in an area with a large LGBT population.
The Party for Freedom will march for “white heteronormativity” on Saturday in Sydney.
Only 28 have clicked attending on the Facebook group, however.
(Facebook/Party for Freedom)
The group is led by Nick Folkes, whose featured photos on Facebook show him holding a Confederate flag and wearing a t-shirt with the message: “Rapefugees not welcome”.
He told news.com.au that the march, which was originally organised in August, was a reaction to the “purple-haired rainbow collective”.
Its name is a clear reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, though unlike BLM and the Trans Lives Matter campaign, straight people are notably not oppressed.
Folkes added that being gay was a choice, saying: “In most cases it’s a lifestyle people choose.
“My neighbour has kids and he was straight but went gay.”
(Facebook/Party for Freedom)
Being gay is of course not a choice – and there’s scientific evidence to back that up.
Folkes added that transgender people were “retards”.
He said: “All these 76 genders. I say there’s [sic] three genders: male, female and retards.
“The rest is lunacy. The world’s being turned upside down.”
(Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)
This offensive, hateful rhetoric carries over to the group’s choice of location for its march, the famously LGBT area of Darlinghurst.
The Sydney suburb is home to a pink triangle memorial to those LGBT people who were killed by Nazis during the Holocaust.
Folkes did not apologise for this choice, saying: “We want to make a strong point — I don’t feel were provoking anyone, we can hold a rally anywhere.”
(Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)
He added provocatively that Yes campaigners could hold a march in a “straight area,” which is obviously not the point.
There are no specific memorials for straight people, because there’s no need.
Folkes said that the Yes side was “a massive propaganda campaign to attract more people to that lifestyle.
“I believe it will weaken society and make a homosexual society.”
Unfortunately for Folkes, the far-right leader’s phone is being “swamped” with rainbow emojis by same-sex marriage supporters, according to him.
(Getty)
As well as calling these activists “emotionally unhinged rainbow robbers” on Facebook, Folkes also compared LGBT people to faeces.
“When you mix the colours of the rainbow together, you get brown. = ,” he wrote.
New South Wales Police has confirmed it will be in attendance at the event.
Alex Greenwich, the state MP for Sydney and a leading member of the Equality Campaign, urged activists not to be distracted by the far-right rally.
“We will be urging everybody this weekend to spend time and energy knocking on doors getting out the yes vote,” he said.
“It is so important we are not distracted.
“We didn’t want to have this postal survey, we wanted the government to do its job but because they failed to do it, that means we have to.”
As the vote got underway earlier this month, anti-LGBT activists continued their divisive campaign based on tactics developed by evangelicals in the US, attempting to conflate the marriage vote with transgender issues and LGBT sex education.
The ‘No’ camp has received broad coverage throughout the Australian media with warnings about ‘transgender marriage’ – even though the vote has no impact on transgender issues – and claiming without basis that it will lead to ‘radical gay sex education’.
A new poll this week showed that their scaremongering is beginning to pay off, with a sharp drop in support for equal marriage.
