"My brother is gay," Okamura told LGBT activists. "I suggested extending the partnership, but the media deliberately silenced it."
A message to rainbow flag "fans"
"I was approached on the street in Brno by a group of pirate LGBT activists who support migrants from Africa, Ukrainians and the adoption of children by homosexuals. So I filmed it again," Okamura confided on his official Facebook profile, where he is followed by over 421,000 users. After a lengthy exchange on migration policy, the topic of LGBT+ rights came up.
"I will say one more thing to reassure you. I was in the last term, and it was deliberately hushed up by the media - when you have those [rainbow] flags - for the extension of civil partnerships. That was my proposal. It was a long-term one. So that they could inherit as well. So that they can examine each other's medical records. That was my proposal," Okamura boasted. It is not clear what exactly he wanted to reassure the young people he was discussing.
Would Okamura still rather "jump out of the window"?
"What about adopting children?" the group asked Okamura. "Certainly not the adoption of children. And can I tell you why?" asked the politician, who clearly wanted to come out of the discussion as a maximally cultured, pleasant and patient person open to democratic discussion. "We know you would rather jump out of a window than have same-sex parents," the young opponents responded, alluding to an earlier statement Okamura made in 2021, when the House was debating the legalization of marriage for all.
"The young people said they were in favour of homosexuals adopting children. I have nothing against homosexuals," Okamura joked on camera. "The youth have no experience of the orphanage. I grew up in an orphanage for part of my childhood, so I know what and how."
When personal experience (not) decides
"Those gay adoption advocates keep saying that children will be better off with a same-sex couple than in an orphanage. And that's not true," the SPD chairman let himself be heard saying.
"Did you like it there?" one of the women responded.
"Sure. Definitely more than with a same-sex couple," Okamura, who was in residential care when his mother fell ill, replied with a smile. He could not answer the question of how he knew he would not like living in a rainbow family when he never grew up with a same-sex couple.
"I can't imagine. I wouldn't even want to try it," Okamura said, asking the opinion of other men who grew up with him in the orphanage during the previous regime - and often stayed there until they came of age.
"And some of them were brought up by a same-sex couple, that they can compare?"
"Wait a minute. That would already be an irreversible disaster. A child is not a toy. It's not an experiment like a pet," Okamura continued.
"As a child who grew up in an orphanage, I'm telling you based on my experience - and let me give you the right - I would never want to have two moms or two dads, and I would rather grow up in an orphanage."
Even Okamura's gay sibling hasn't changed his views
The politician went on to complain that he had not received any studies from LGBT activists examining the psychological effects of a same-sex couple adopting a boy or girl at an early age - and the child eventually discovering that he or she would "rather have a mummy and a daddy".
But it was clear from further discussions that even if someone had provided him with such a curious psychological study, its results would have trumped the classic argument that "it is against nature for a child to have two dads".
"As far as gay couples are concerned, I am not against homosexuals, and my younger brother is also a homosexual," Okamura denied his homophobia. "But you wouldn't give him those rights? To adoption and to marriage," the group of young people said.
"But it is not natural for a child to grow up with two dads!" said Okamura, proving that he really "does not know his brother" when it comes to LGBT parenting.
Those rhinos again...
"No one would have asked me as a young child, they would have let me adopt two dads, and then when I was older I would have found out I didn't want that," Okamura explained his fears. "If the child found out he didn't want two dads, that would be a real human tragedy. "
"When I was little, there was no such thing. There was no problem of gay couples wanting to adopt. There wasn't the nonsense of being told there were more than two genders. (...) And that there were toilets for non-binary people, and there was a rhino," he continued his monologue.
"Nobody says that," the young people contradicted him. "That's what I'm saying," the politician responded, probably to underline how ridiculous he found the whole subject.
"Show me where one of those non-binary toilets is," a group of young people demanded. "Maybe here at your college. At Masaryk University," the politician said. "There really isn't one," the rainbow-flag-waving debaters said. "They wrote about it in the media. But the mainstream ones. Look. That it's at the [Czech]University of Agriculture in Prague 6. At Charles University - a non-binary toilet. Who is supposed to go there?"
He illustrated how "gender-neutral toilets", where everyone, regardless of their gender, can "solve" their call of nature, can be turned into a pseudo-caucus of special "toilets for non-binary people", the prevalence of which in the Czech population is estimated at around 3%.
Media? "Evil elites" and relevant sources
Interestingly, according to Alena Kluknavská, an expert on political communication from Masaryk University in Brno, Okamura often portrays the (mainly public) media as "evil elites, enemies of the people" - which was also hinted at by the mention of how "the media silenced" his efforts for more equal registered partnerships. On the other hand, we see that when it suits the SPD leader, he does not hesitate to refer to articles published by the mainstream media in the style of "journalists wrote it, so it must be true".
He does similar populist "magic" on the issue of adoption - he takes his own experience of being in an orphanage as an argument for why he is more "justified" than the mainstream society to speak out on the issue of adoption of children by same-sex couples. But the fact that he himself has no personal experience of what it is like to grow up with two mothers or two fathers does not seem to matter to Okamura.
Why he does not want to grant same-sex couples the right to adopt is clear - soon after enactment it would become clear (as in many other countries) that there is no "irreversible catastrophe" in the lives of the children concerned, quite the contrary. But then there would be nothing to worry about, would there?
