It’s election time in the ACT next month, and among the hopefuls is Philip Pocock, who seeks to make homosexual sex illegal again.

The former Liberal Party member is running as an independent in the Molonglo electorate. He’s a consultant psychologist who got into a long and prescriptive diatribe about sex when asked a straightforward question on marriage equality in candidates’ forum.

“Homosexual unions not only deserve no special rights but must be seen as the destructive behaviours that should be actively discouraged,” he announced to the Canberra Catholics Vote website.

“I believe sodomy of man or woman should be regarded as a criminal offence and while people do not have the right to go ‘poofter bashing’, to use colloquial language, they should have the right to discriminate in terms of employment, accommodation etc as they do in dealing with drug addicts etc,” he added.

Even the front page of his own campaign website gets specific about blocking gay equality:

He’s active on Twitter too…

Gay marriage bill dead. That is real love. Now to criminalize sodomy and prevent self-harm – even greater love for misguided homosexuals.

— Philip Pocock (@philpocock) September 19, 2012

And like most homophobes who strive to attack our hard-won rights, Pocock denies he’s anti-gay.

“I don’t hate gay people,” he told 2cc radio today.

“What I’m saying is there’s no real debate on the literature about the fact that homosexual communities suffer higher levels of psychological distress than the rest of the community.

“One argument from the gay community is that this is because they’re ostracised. My argument is that sodomy is psychologically aversive behaviour and what I’m saying is that people need to protected from themselves.”