In 2011, Devine used the news of Australian federal government minister Penny Wong's decision to parent a child with her female partner as the basis of a column in which she argued that the 2011 riots in England were the result of a "fatherless society". Writing for "ABC News", Catherine Deveny criticised Devine's claim that same-sex marriage was a "political tool to undermine the last bastion of bourgeois morality - the traditional nuclear family". Devine sparked further controversy in 2015 after claiming that "women abusing welfare" were the main cause of domestic violence in Australia and contending "if you want to break the cycle of violence, end the welfare incentive for unsuitable women to keep having children to a string of feckless men". In 2016, Devine caused controversy by comparing the purported "vilification" of opponents of same-sex marriage in Australia to the victims of beheadings by ISIS, saying that critics of same-sex marriage were being "brutally made examples of" by "intolerant authoritarians".