A columnist for the Daily Mail has hit out at same-sex parents in a shocking opinion piece.
While many celebrated the news that Olympic diver Tom Daley and husband Dustin Lance Black are having a baby together, right-wing columnist Richard Littlejohn took the opportunity to spread his bigoted views.
Joking that someone should “pass [him] the sick bag” after seeing a photo of their ultrasound scan on social media, the controversy-peddling author labelled the news a ‘publicity stunt’ and suggested the child won’t really be their baby.
“Here we have two men drawing attention to the fact that ‘they’ are having a baby,” he wrote.
“But where’s the mum, the possessor of the womb which features in this photograph? She appears to have been written out of the script entirely. We are not told her identity, where she lives… she is merely the anonymous incubator.
“No one is suggesting that homosexual couples can’t make excellent parents. But nor is everyone comfortable with the trend towards treating women as mere breeding machines and babies as commodities.”
Littlejohn went on to question why no one, particularly other journalists, seemed to have an issue with Daley and Black having a child, and appeared to suggest the couple should be required to reveal which one of them is the biological father.
“What I also find slightly disconcerting is that this story was reported virtually everywhere without so much as a raised eyebrow, as if it would be impolite even to ask any questions about the parentage,” he continued.
“For instance, is Daley or his husband the father? Was it Bill, or was it Ben? Or neither of them?”
Almost as if ticking off a Daily Mail checklist, Littlejohn then tried his hand at mis-gendering trans women, aligning himself with Germaine Greer’s view that “someone in possession of a full set of wedding tackle is a man, not a woman”.
Referring to a recent news story of a trans woman in New York becoming the first to successfully breastfeed her baby, the columnist labelled trans parents “selfish” and used quotation marks around ‘her’ to belittle the woman’s identity.
“Can [journalists] please grow a pair – if that’s not too ‘transphobic’ – and stop pretending this is the new normal. Not in our house it isn’t. Nor, I suspect, in yours or 99.99 per cent of the rest of the world, either,” he added.
“Still, I’m looking forward to the photos of Tom Daley breastfeeding his new baby.”
While many in the Daily Mail comments section agreed with Littlejohn, expressing even more bigotry than he did – seriously, don’t look – many on Twitter were quick to point out how damaging his views are.
https://twitter.com/ruth_hunt/status/964420782305591296
Just when you think we might be living in a more accepting, inclusive world, THIS comes along from the Daily Mail.
In 2018.
More toxic homophobic bile spewed from an ignorant "newspaper".
TWO DADS IS NORMAL
TWO MUMS IS NORMAL
MUM AND DAD IS NORMAL
SINGLE PARENT IS NORMAL pic.twitter.com/kElwpwSwob— Pride in London (@PrideInLondon) February 16, 2018
Richard Littlejohn is so obsessed with the gays that other newspapers keep a tally of how many times he mentions them. pic.twitter.com/wMo9mqNhOS
— Philip J. Ellis (he/him) (@Philip_Ellis) February 16, 2018
please don’t pretend being richard littlejohn is at all normal
— Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) February 16, 2018
Fuck Richard Littlejohn, there’s my nuanced fucking take. He makes me want to vomit.
— Daniel (@sillyolddaniel) February 16, 2018
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