Facebook page urging abortion of ‘gay’ fetuses shut down

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI – In the US, North Carolina pastor Charles Worley called for queers to be penned in electrified fences to hasten their elimination.

His comrades-in-pastorhood have variously called for parents to punch their male children and crack their wrists if they are not masculine enough, invoked a return of the good old days when queers were prosecuted, and conjured up the now more than yawn-inducing stereotype about “redefinitions” of marriage that include human and beast unions.

But whoever is behind one Italian Facebook page decided to go for broke: they called for the abortion of fetuses suspected of having gay genes.

News site Worldcrunch notes that Italian daily La Repubblica reported that the anti-gay Facebook page was set up June 19, with the following claim: “Thanks to the miracle of science, we are able to impede [homosexuality] . . . Yes, I know that it is terrible to abort the poor babies affected by the gene of sodomy. But it is the lesser evil.”

So far, there is no indication who is behind the page, but it garnered more than 2,000 comments — mostly, but not all, negative — before it was pulled after several civil rights groups and politicians objected.

Gay Star News quotes a spokesperson for the Gay Center in Italy as saying, “This is the last proof that we need a law against homophobia as soon as possible.”

Image source: gaystarnews.com

Natasha Barsotti is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. She had high aspirations of representing her country in Olympic Games sprint events, but after a while the firing of the starting gun proved too much for her nerves. So she went off to university instead. Her first professional love has always been journalism. After pursuing a Master of Journalism at UBC , she began freelancing at Xtra West — now Xtra Vancouver — in 2006, becoming a full-time reporter there in 2008.

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