Popular columnist Richard Littlejohn endures backlash for defending children’s right to a mother and father
DAILY MAIL columnist Richard Littlejohn has attracted the wrath of the liberal media for writing that “children benefit most from being brought up by a man and a woman”.
Littlejohn was commenting on the announcement that Olympic diver Tom Daley and his ‘husband’ are having a baby, yet had made no mention of the necessary mother.
Littlejohn’s column is a mainstay of The Daily Mail; he is known for his robust views which, on issues such as inefficient local councils (“You couldn’t make it up”), come over as common sense. His views on traditional parenting were not, however, appreciated by certain advertisers.
Center Parcs, Quorn Foods UK and London’s Southbank Centre withdrew their advertising from the newspaper and prompted other major companies to review their placements.
Littlejohn pointed out that he was not attacking gay parenting, but “the trend towards treating women as mere breeding machines and babies as commodities”. Yet there was a huge backlash on social media.
A spokesperson for The Daily Mail told the Press Gazette: “Had any of the political zealots who attacked Richard Littlejohn’s column actually read it, they would know that he explicitly supports civil partnerships and the fostering of children by gay couples – hardly evidence of homophobia.
“Nor is it homophobic to ask whether it is right to deny a child the love of its own mother.”