Hong Kong’s largest political party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) on marriage equality and it seems as though party supporters are not huge fans of same-sex marriage.
Attendees of the forum made some pretty outrageous claims about legalising gay marriage, saying that there would be an increase of abortions and human trafficking and that it would lead to incest being decriminalised.
There were also concerns from DAB members that childbirth would be ‘commercialised’ if Hong Kong were to achieve marriage equality and surrogate mothers would be shipped in by human traffickers for gay couples.
Jayson Tam— the division head of Evangelical Free Church of the Yan Fook Church—was in attendance and agreed with these sentiments, Hong Kong Free Press reports.
“The global trend of gay rights development is towards adoption and the surrogacy industry, which will lead to human trafficking. We must speak for the voiceless.”
“Marriage, family and children are a gift from God. What [you] said is true: we need to think about our future generations and how to protect those without a voice.”
Tam added that by seeking equality, the LGBT+ community was “violating others’ rights.”
The conservative leader pointed to the recent progress in neighbouring Taiwan–where same-sex marriage was legalised this year— as something to fear, citing high divorce rates and an “AIDS rate is 10 times that of Japan and South Korea.”
Hong Kong’s first openly gay elected official Raymond Chan said the comments made at the DAB event had no basis in fact.
“They have absolutely nothing to do with gay marriage or homosexuality.
“Sometimes people make the slippery-slope fallacy, in that they exaggerate its effect with unlimited consequences.”
