April 6, 2021
Scottish Candidate's COVID Theory: It's Caused by Gay Marriage
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 1 MIN.
Peter Tait, a candidate for the Scottish Parliament, has offered a theory on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic: He chalks it up to marriage equality, he told local newspaper the Shetland Times.
Taint, a retired mussel farmer who is running as an Independent, told the newspaper that "COVID is possibly related to" same-sex couples publicly making lifetime commitments, and said that "his position was related to his religious beliefs," the newspaper reported.
"I'm representing as best I can things that God would want me to represent," the candidate for the Shetland MSP seat explained, adding that he "suppose[d] there likely will" be a backlash to his epidemiological hypothesis.
The claim is only the latest unusual assertion from the aspiring politician, noted U.K. newspaper The Sun.
"Mr. Tait stood in the island's 2019 by-elections, and told voters he'd move the monarchy to Scotland," The Sun recalled. "However, he received just 31 votes."
That track record didn't seem to bother him: "I just wanted to make my case well, irrespective of votes," he told the press.
Such COVID-related conspiracy theorizing is not new. In February, an Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian, stated on Telegram last month that people who have been vaccinated against COVID have become homosexuals."
That same claim was also made in January by contyroversial rabbi Rabbi Daniel Asor.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
