Barnaby Joyce is the leader of the National Party of Australia, he's Australia's deputy prime minister, and he was a leading voice in opposition to marriage equality in that country. So we should've seen this coming:

Barnaby Joyce, who opposed equal marriage because “every child has a right to know her or his mother and father” has impregnated his mistress behind his wife’s back. Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the National Party, was a strong opponent of equal marriage during the country’s plebiscite on the issue. During the campaign he claimed marriage exists as “a process that’s inherently there for the support of, or the prospect of, children.” He added: “I think that every child has a right, absolute right to know her or his mother and father and also… should be given the greatest opportunity to know their biological mother and father.”

The children Joyce had with his first wife — they have four daughters — certainly know their biological father a lot better now. Because his kids, along with the rest of the Australian public, now know their dad to be a huge fucking hypocrite.

This Catholic politician's mistress is a former staffer. She was Joyce's media adviser and was reportedly on his payroll when the affair began and the impregnation took place. And Joyce's mistress, like all of his other staffers, was a frequent guest at the Joyce family home. The soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Joyce is pretty pissed about that detail:

Natalie Joyce released a statement about her husband’s actions.

She said: “I am deeply saddened by the news that my husband is now having a child with a former staff member. I understand that this has been going on for many months and started when she was a paid employee. This situation is devastating on many fronts. For my girls who are affected by the family breakdown and for me as a wife of 24 years, who placed my own career on hold to support Barnaby through his political life. Our family life has had to be shared during Barnaby’s political career and it was with trust that we let campaign and office staff into our homes and into our lives. Naturally we also feel hurt by the actions of Barnaby and the staff member involved."

While Australia was treated to the all the usual arguments against same-sex marriage during their recent plebiscite — marriage is about religion (but straight atheists are allowed to marry), marriage is about children (but straight married couples can remain childless without their marriage licenses being revoked), and marriage is about monogamy (but straight married couples are free to practice ethnical non-monogamy or, in Mr. Joyce's case, unethical non-monogamy) — we do have to credit Joyce with a new and novel argument against gay marriage: Some people won't want to eat our cows.

Speaking in 2015 while serving as Minister for Agriculture, Joyce suggested that letting gay couples get married would harm the cattle trade. In an interview with ABC, he insisted: “Where we live economically is south-east Asia, that’s where our cattle go. When we go there, there are judgments whether you like it or not that are made about us. They see us as decadent."

They're still guzzling Coke openly and drinking champaign on the DL in Saudi Arabia, dude. Your cows will be fine.