Municipal assembly leaders in Ebina, Kanagawa Prefecture, issued a warning Monday to Masumi Tsurusashi, a 71-year-old assemblyman, over discriminatory remarks he made on his Twitter account about gay marriage.
"These comments constituted a rash action by Tsurusashi, a public servant, and we issued a warning after what happened," said Kento Morishita, head of the municipal assembly, after a meeting of party leaders to discuss the issue.
The warning came after Tsurusashi posted three tweets Sunday criticizing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, saying that gay love is abnormal and criticizing the media by saying they should not report the activities of abnormal people. He also said such people are biologically strange. After a storm of criticism, Tsurusashi removed the comments later Sunday.
The Ebina Municipal Assembly has not yet advised him to resign, but will decide what to do after it hears from him about the incident.
Tsurusashi's tweets came in response to the results of a study by researchers at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research on public attitudes toward LGBT people, including same-sex marriage.
Over 1,200 people replied to the survey, which was conducted earlier this year but released Saturday. A slim majority of 51.1 percent said they approved of legalizing gay marriage.
Tsurusashi told local media Sunday that he had seen the survey results in the media when he was drunk and that he had not intended his comments to be discriminatory.
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