In a new interview, openly gay British actor Rupert Everett stunned the LGBT community by telling London’s Sunday Times that he “can’t think of anything worse” for children than being raised by two gay fathers.
Everett was commenting that his 77-year-old mother, who knew he was gay by the time he turned 18, still wished that he was straight, and that she would “like him to have a pretty wife” and children.
“He’s so good with children. He’d make a wonderful father,” said Sara Everett. “But I also think a child needs a mummy and a daddy.”
Rupert, 53, agreed:
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“She thinks children need a father and a mother and I agree with her,” he said. “I can’t think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads.
“Some people might not agree with that. Fine! That’s just my opinion.
“I’m not speaking on behalf of the gay community. In fact, I don’t feel like I’m part of any ‘community’.
“The only community I belong to is humanity and we’ve got too many children on the planet, so it’s good not to have more.”
This is not the first time Everett, once considered a trailblazer for LGBT actors after he came out as gay 20 years ago, has caught the ire of the LGBT community.
In a 2009 interview, Everett told the London Observer that he wished he hadn’t come out because it had hurt his career.
“I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out … The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business,” he said at the time.
Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, told the Daily Mail, “Rupert should get out a little bit more to see the facts for himself. There is absolutely no evidence that the kids of gay parents suffer in the way they are being brought up or in how they develop.”
