Kennedy MP Bob Katter has accusing the gay community of stealing “the most beautiful word in the English language”.
Speaking on Sky News on Wednesday, Mr Katter was angry homosexual people had “taken” the word gay, which used to mean happy.
“I have a very clear idea of what is going on here: the homosexuals in Australia, they took the word gay,” Mr Katter told Sky News.
“It has a particular meaning to me because I got 84 per cent in English, in matriculation, which was a very, very high mark indeed.”
Mr Katter saw the line in the Alexander Pope poem The Rape of the Lock which has the line “then Belinda smiled and all the world was gay”.
Mr Katter said that line “conjured up a beautiful image, it was the most beautiful word in the English language.”
He also used the interview to attack same-sex marriage.
“‘They’ve got this thing called marriage, we will take that too’, well what else are they going to take? Are they going to take our freedom to say we don’t approve of what you are doing?”
According to most dictionaries the primary meaning of gay is (of a person, especially a man) homosexual with a secondary dated meaning of “light-hearted and carefree”