LONDON — The former leader of the right-wing UK Independent Party and one-time advisor to Margaret Thatcher, has declared that gay men have up to 20,000 sexual partners in their “short, miserable lives” before dying young of AIDS-related illnesses.

Lord Christopher Monckton made the claims earlier this week in a column for WorldNet Daily defending anti-gay Australian politician Rosalie Crestani, who has introduced legislation to ban the “promotion” of homosexuality, reports Metro UK.

Monckton called AIDS and other diseases the “wages” of gay promiscuity:

Official survey after official survey had shown that homosexuals had an average of 500-1,000 partners in their sexually active lifetime, and that some had as many as 20,000. One wonders how they found time for anything else. The wages of promiscuity is deadly disease. It is now at last admitted, even in official circles, that HIV is chiefly a disease of homosexuals and drug-abusers. And that a far greater percentage of homosexuals than heterosexuals do drugs. AIDS, then, is at root a “gay” disease, and officialdom’s terrified refusal to admit that fact has killed 36 million worldwide. Councillor Crestani was so shocked by the official mortality figures for homosexuals that she proposes to circulate a memorandum to all councillors and staff giving them detailed statistics for promiscuity, prevalence of HIV and many other sexually transmitted diseases, and for the consequently short, miserable lives and high death rate of homosexuals.

Monckton also suggested that the only reason gay rights advocates promoted same-sex marriage – given that their partners “last as little as a few hours” – was to adopt children, which was not “fair.”

Monckton has previously called for the regular screening of the population for AIDS and the life-long quarantine of all carriers.