Former Republican politician Alan Keyes has claimed that gay sex does not qualify as ‘sexual activity’ because it is not between a man and a woman.

Keyes, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent in 2008, made the comments in a blog post for WND.

He wrote: “We call it sexual activity because it involves bodily organs and feelings associated with the activity for which the different sexes appear to exist. Yet, in the strict sense of the term, it is not sexual activity at all.

“The functional difference that distinguishes one sex from the other quite literally has nothing to do with same-sex activity.

“As individuals, some human beings may find this activity intensely gratifying. But considered on the whole, in terms of its consequences, it implies the nonexistence of humanity.

“The homosexual couple is not engaged in the act of human procreation. Their activity is not haunted by the possibility of human offspring. It does not imply the reification of their responsibility for the future of humanity as such.

“The pleasurable satisfaction it involves does not draw individuals away from their particular selves toward a concrete physical union (in the child they conceive) that represents the perpetuation of their being as a whole, their human being.

“Their ecstasy is more like the highest pitch given off by a guitar string just before the turn of the tuning peg that causes it to break.”

Keyes previously claimed that allowing gay people in the boy scouts would “indoctrinate” children into “hedonism”.