‘I can’t understand why people would be offended’: ACL director Lyle Shelton defends comparing Safe Schools to Holocaust

THE Australian Christian Lobby’s director Lyle Shelton clashed with hosts Waleed Aly and Carrie Bickmore on The Project last night.

THE Australian Christian Lobby’s director Lyle Shelton has denied saying that “same-sex marriage or the Safe Schools program was like the Holocaust”.

Mr Shelton told The Project on Wednesday night he did not think his comments were offensive to anyone.

“Well ... I ... Can’t understand why people would be offended, Carrie,” he said.

“I wasn’t in any way saying that same-sex marriage or anything ... Safe Schools was like the Holocaust. What I’m saying is at the moment we’ve got some bad ideas being put forward in public policy, telling young people, children as young as four in our schools, that no one can tell you what gender you are, through this Gender Fairy public relations from the Safe Schools coalition.

“That is what happened in the 1930s in Germany. The parallel is between speaking up or not speaking up when bad ideas are put forward in public policy. It is no offence to anyone at all.”

Yesterday, the ACL were heavily criticised for likening same-sex marriage and the Safe Schools program to Nazi atrocities.

In a blog post, ACL director Lyle Shelton compared what he called the “unthinkable” things happening in Australia to what happened during the Nazi regime in Germany.

Shelton holds up a print out of the book The Gender Fairy.

“That Labor leader Bill Shorten can promise during an election to fund the so-called ‘Safe Schools’ program which teaches children as young as four that ‘only you can know if you are a boy or a girl — no one can tell you’ and there be so little push back is a failure of those of us who know better,” Shelton wrote.

“Changing the definition of marriage to entrench motherless and fatherlessness in public policy and teaching our kids their gender is fluid should be opposed.

“The cowardice and weakness of Australia’s ‘gatekeepers’ is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s.”

But when The Project’s co-host Waleed Aly pushed Mr Shelton to explain how he linked The Gender Fairy book to the Safe Schools program, Aly told him is was “inaccurate”.

“I can tell you. We have heard from the woman who wrote it — we just heard from her before — she says it has nothing to do with Safe Schools,” he said.

“That is not true, Waleed,” Mr Shelton replied.

“This book, The Gender Fairy is promoted by Safe Schools through their resources and it encourages schools to stock this in their library. It is a resource for four-year-olds and it says only you know whether you are a boy or a girl.”

After ending his interview by asking for a link that confirms this, Aly later showed a statement from the Australian Safe Schools Coalition confirming that the book was not apart of their program at all.