SPAIN: Lawmaker Blames Trillion Dollar National Debt On "Subsidies To Gays"

A Spanish lawmaker says that the nation's financial problems are due to "subsidies granted to homosexuals" by the previously ruling party.

Popular Party senator Luz Elena Sanín told journalists that Spain’s ruling conservative party had increased its public spending due to "the debts" caused by “subsidies for NGOs and homosexuals”. Sanín, who represents Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in the Senate, said former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero with the country's opposition Socialists had forced the country’s debt to surpass a record €1 trillion with "his favours". The Colombian-born politician, now a Spanish national, added that her party had been forced to further aggravate the country’s economic crisis when coming to power in order to pay back the debt from Zapatero’s subsidies for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community. "Otherwise we wouldn't have this gaping economic hole," Catalan daily La Vanguardia reported her as saying during a press conference held to sing the praises of her party's economic model.

A member of the (now) minority Socialist Party is calling on Sanin to apologize or resign. The above-linked source reports that LGBT groups have denounced her claim as a "breeding group for homophobia."