Bayit Yehudi candidate: I'm a proud homophobe

"Every person can be abnormal in his house," but "he can't make demands from me, as the state," says 8th on Bayit Yehudi list.

By LAHAV HARKOV
Bezalel Smotrich. (photo credit: Courtesy/Regavim)
Bezalel Smotrich.
(photo credit: Courtesy/Regavim)
Bezalel Smotrich, eighth on the Bayit Yehudi’s list, came under fire for calling LGBT people “abnormal” while on a panel at a school in Givatayim on Sunday.
“Every person can decide he doesn’t want to live a normal life; that’s his right,” Smotrich said in a recording from the event played on Army Radio. “He does not have a right, just because he doesn’t feel comfortable being abnormal, to demand from all of us to destroy the concept of normalcy and say ‘there’s no such thing as normal anymore.
“Every person can be abnormal in his house and form whatever family unit he wants. He can’t make demands from me, as the state.”
Gay people, Smotrich said, “feel uncomfortable being unusual. It’s not fun, so they come out of the closet and then run and say they’re proud of it.”
When one of the students called Smotrich a homophobe, the Bayit Yehudi candidate responded: “I am a proud homophobe.”
Bayit Yehudi responded by saying that, instead of acting surprised at a religious-Zionist party’s stance on this matter, the press should ask Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid and Hatnua number two Tzipi Livni why they left the plenum when there were votes on gay rights.
In 2006, Smotrich organized the “Beasts Parade” of animals to protest the gay pride parade in Jerusalem. When asked about it earlier in this election campaign, he said he did it when he was young and stupid.
Smotrich’s statements Sunday came after several incidents in which gay rights activists protested the party’s stance against allowing samesex marriage.
On Thursday, a brawl broke out at a Bayit Yehudi event as a protester tried to wave a gay pride flag and Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett initially was not allowed to enter the event. On Friday, when Bennett wished on Facebook a safe Shabbat to IDF soldiers, his wall was inundated with posts of photos of LGBT people in IDF uniforms. The protesters have yet to reach events or Facebook walls of other parties that openly oppose gay marriage.