An Australian anti-gay hate group has compared gay sex to ‘swimming in a sewer’ and has suggested that it is as deadly as smoking.

Family Voice Australia made the claim through its VoxBrief newsletter in an article written by the wife of the group’s president.

‘Governments rightly discourage smoking and promote awareness about its harms, but there is often deafening silence on the serious health risks of anal intercourse,’ wrote Family Voice Australia volunteer researcher Ros Phillips.

The article claims that anal sex is far more dangerous than vaginal sex, that lesbians trend towards obesity, and that gay men have mortality rates far greater than heterosexual men.

Phillips, a former Sunday school teacher, has a science degree but no medical qualifications, and the article draws on material published by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals – a notorious American ex-gay group.

Family Voice Australia, formerly known as the Festival of Light, is one of the most strident anti-gay groups in Australia, with the Rev. Fred Nile being a former head of its New South Wales state branch.

Nile, who leads Australia’s far-right Christian Democratic Party is famous for holding a prayer for rain during the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade most years, and has warned that God may one day judge Sydney like he did Sodom and Gomorrah if the parade continues.

The group regularly lobbies state and federal parliamentary inquiries to oppose equal rights for LGBTs.

Family Voice Australia was founded in 1972 by a group of Australian Christians who had been inspired by the British moral crusader Mary Whitehouse and Phillips was one of its earliest members.

The group brought Whitehouse to Australia a year later to campaign against smut on Australian television and again in 1978.