Japanese politician slammed as ‘dinosaur’ after claiming LGBT education would mean ‘no children’
- Masateru Shiraishi, 78, warned that if local schools were required to teach students about same-sex families, the ward ‘will have no residents’
- Backlash online was swift, with one social media user claiming Shiraishi was ‘one of the reasons why Japan is stuck in the past’
Masateru Shiraishi, chairman of the Adachi Ward welfare committee, made his remarks at a meeting last month and they have since provoked widespread condemnation online, with posters criticising him as a “dinosaur” guilty of hate speech.
“If L [lesbians] and G [gays] spread to Adachi Ward completely we will have no residents because it means there will be no children,” he said during a debate about the proposed law.
Shiraishi, 78, later told the Mainichi newspaper: “If LGBT people get focused on in an excessive manner, then children will lose their sense of the need for having and raising more children in the future. Schools must teach the importance of normal marriage and having and raising children.”
Shiraishi, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, was issued a warning by the assembly speaker and his own party but remained defiant.
“The way that people receive my comments will be different,” he said. “I, for example, am offended by all the opinions that I hear from the Japanese Communist Party. If the parties involved are unhappy, then that is fine.”
One Twitter user suggested local politicians should be obliged to attend a town hall meeting with LGBT residents to hear their grievances and proposals about ways to make the community more harmonious.