Fact check: LGBTQIA+ does not include paedophiles, despite Albany councillor’s false claims

An Albany city councillor sparked outrage this week when he falsely said the plus in LGBTQIA+ includes paedophiles — a claim that has been debunked by experts and civil rights advocates.

Councillor and doctor Thomas Brough made the false statement in a council meeting on Tuesday night, saying that the plus “includes a group of people who identify as minor attracted persons”.

Albany Pride committee member Tiger Bird said the acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual with the plus used to encompass “the wide array of identities that fall under the LGBTQIA umbrella”.

They said the plus includes culturally specific terms, such as ‘brotherboy’ and ‘sistergirl’, which are found in Australia’s Indigenous community.

This definition concurs with that used by the State government and the Australian Medical Association.

The WA state government website uses the acronym LGBTQ+, which it says is short for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender diverse, and queer, and “others on the spectrum of diverse sex, sexualities and genders”.

“This acronym is an umbrella term and people identify in lots of different ways” the website states.

In a position statement released on February 6, the AMA defines the acronym lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and/or gender diverse, queer, intersex, asexual, sistergirl, and brotherboy.

Historian Timothy Jones, who is an associate professor at La Trobe University, said that there wasn’t a “single definition” of the term as “different cultures have different expressions of minority sexualities and gender identities”.

In North America, the term LGBTIQA2s+ has been popularised with the ‘2s’ representing Indigenous two-spirit identities while Australia’s use of the plus “often explicitly includes Indigenous sistergirls and brotherboys, as well as pansexual, greysexual, nonbinary and gender diverse and so on”.

He strongly refuted the claim that the plus has ever been used to include people attracted to children.

“Nonconsensual sexual activities or inclinations have never been included in descriptions of diverse sexual orientations or gender identities,” Mr Jones said.

“Associating minority identities with rape and child sexual abuse is vilification and is inexcusable.

“It’s a category error that slurs all LGBTIQA+ people with notions of sin, crime, pathology and brokenness, and is the kind of flawed logic that leads to the promotion of hate crimes and attempts to change or suppress LGBTIQA+ people’s identities.”

He noted that the majority of child sex offences happen in heterosexual homes and that “there’s no active paedophile promotion movement or minor attracted movement in Australia of any significance”.