Health Minister says homosexual and non-marital heterosexual urges can be resisted

The Minister also said his opposition to men who have had sex with other men donating blood was based on safety alone.

And he said he was opposed to homosexual couples adopting children because the “natural order is for a man and a woman to have a child.”

He was asked by Alliance MLA Trevor Lunn on the floor of the Assembly on Tuesday (November 12) if he believed “homosexuality was an illness treatable by medical or psychiatric means” or as another member of his party had previously said: “an abomination.”

Mr Poots responded: “I do not think that it is an illness, in the first instance. I think that many people have various elements to their lives. When it comes to sexuality, many people who are heterosexual desire lots of other folks, and those of us who are married should not be doing that, so people can resist urges.”

The Minister also said his opposition to men who have had sex with other men donating blood was informed by safety considerations.

In 2011 the rest of the UK removed a life-time ban on men who had engaged in male-to-male sexual relations from donating blood. Such men can now donate blood in the est of the UK if they refrain from male-to-male sexual relations for twelve months. But not so in Northern Ireland.

Mr Poots said: “I will make it very clear that my stance on blood safety is purely about safety.”

The Minister also said he was opposed to homosexual couples adopting children because the “natural order is for a man and a woman to have a child.”

“When it comes to my stance on adoption, I have just come from a midwifery-led unit in Lagan Valley, and all the people who were giving birth in that unit were women, and all those women were not impregnated by other women,” he said.

“So, whether one believes in God or in evolution, the natural order is for a man and a woman to have a child.

“Therefore, that has made my views on adoption and raising children very clear; it should be a man and a woman who raise a child,” he added.

Chair of the Assembly’s Health Committee and Londonderry MLA Maeve McLaughlin said the Minister needed to leave his “prejudices at the door” and govern for everyone in Northern Ireland including the gay community.

“The Minister has brought his own personal prejudices to this issue in the same way that these prejudices clouded his judgement regarding gay people donating blood,” she said.

“Edwin Poots has again shown today why he not a Minister for all the people of the North.

“The focus in any adoption has to be the child’s welfare and to deny children a good home on the basis of prejudices is wrong.

“The minister needs to leave his prejudices at the door as he is there as Health Minister for all the people of the North including the gay community,” she said.