Aristocrat who said homosexuality is ‘gravely dangerous’ to address Reform conference

An aristocrat who described homosexuality as “gravely dangerous” is among the speakers at Reform’s conference this weekend.

Viscount Christopher Monckton is participating in a panel about climate change at Nigel Farage’s Birmingham event on Saturday. 

In 2021, Monckton addressed the Traditional Britain Group — a gathering of far-right activists — on the subject of woke culture. In his speech, he described homosexuality as “a bad idea”, claiming: “It’s not some abstract theological reason, it kills you and it might kill a lot of other people as well.”

Monckton, in addition to saying homosexuality was “medically dangerous”, said: “Homosexuality is so wrong that it is regarded as one of the four sins crying out to heaven for vengeance in traditional theology.”

He called for LGBT+ relationships to be treated like smoking cigarettes, saying: “Should we not require, that just as the state says on the back of your smoking packet, ‘This cigarette may kill you’, shouldn’t we say to homosexuals you need, before you go down that road, to be given a fair and proper medical warning of the dangers inherent in that particular lifestyle?”

At Reform’s party conference this weekend, Monckton will appear on a panel about climate change with James Taylor, president of the denialist Heartland Institute in the US. They will be joined by Lois Perry, director of Heartland’s UK operation, plus Andy Mayer of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and John O’Connell of the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

Last year, members in Reform’s Clacton branch were exposed by Channel 4 News for making homophobic remarks, with one calling the Pride flag degenerate. Party leader Nigel Farage said the comments were “unforgivably nasty”.

Ironically, when Nigel Farage was running UKIP in 2014, he sacked Monckton and wrote a newspaper article about his homophobia. At the time, Monckton claimed that some gay men have “as many as 20,000” sexual partners in their lifetimes. Farage said his comments were “deeply offensive and fundamentally wrong”, and that Monckton “should get no support from Ukippers”. So what’s changed?