Gay anti-marriage equality academic goes on radio rant over postal survey

Professor David Flint, a retired gay legal academic who opposes marriage equality, has gone on a rant over the likely Yes result of the postal survey, making transphobic comments in the process.

Appearing on 2GB last night, Flint attacked the legitimacy of the postal survey and called for the result, to be revealed next week, to be dismissed, Out In Perth has reported.

When told that nearly 80 per cent of voters had returned their forms, he asked, “How many of them are genuine?”

Flint then alleged that there were fraudulent enrolments on the electoral roll which will have inflated the Yes vote and that new enrolments in the lead up to the survey were not adequately vetted for legitimacy.

He also said that postal survey forms could easily have been copied, despite the fact that survey forms are uniquely bar-coded and could not be scanned twice.

“The voting form, which hasn’t even been initialled by an official, is easily copied,” he said.

“So, when the bar-code is read, will it be determined in the presence of independent scrutineers whether this is the original or a copy?”

LGBTI activists and Yes campaigners have long maintained that the postal survey, and the plebiscite before it, was unnecessary and that the issue should have been settled by parliament.

Flint then levelled the slippery slope argument and suggested that schools are being infiltrated by propagandists.

“What’s happened is because the politicians have created this mess, it’s allowed the Marxists to move in and replace education with propaganda.”

“They want to undermine the family, that’s part of the agenda of the left, and to do this what they’ve decided is that they’ll create a completely non-existent LGBTIQXYZ community. There is no such community.”

He also said that marriage equality is not a legitimate concern and only exists to conceal a hidden agenda.

“This is not the real thing that they are searching for, because once they get that, there’ll be no stopping them.”

In a piece published last month in far-right magazine The Spectator, Flint called for the $122 million postal survey to instead be settled by a constitutional referendum at the next election, even though marriage is not defined in Australia’s constitution.

“The issue can only be determined properly at the next election through a constitutional referendum under an electoral system reformed to be better than that worthy of a banana republic,” he wrote.

He also took the opportunity to attack trans and non-binary people’s identities in his radio appearance, having previously labelled it “so-called gender fluidity”.

“One day you can pop up and say ‘Oh, I’ll become a woman’ and I’ll go into women’s lingeries and dressing rooms and do something terrible there.” Flint said.

Users on social media have labelled Flint’s comments as “completely deranged” and “conspiracy theorist” in nature.