William Hague Defending Evangelical Homophobia
Well I guess his party needs all the votes it can get in the run-up to Thursday, but this is makes alarming listening:
Note how Hague answers a different question to the one answered. He suggests that Philippa Stroud hasn’t been suspended as Sutton & Cheam’s Tory PPC because isn’t in favour of discrimination against gay people, yet that wasn’t what was asked, nor is that what the controversy around her centres around:
Question: “If Philip Lardner, Conservative candidate for North Ayrshire & Arran was suspended after writing on his website that homosexuality was ‘not normal’, why hasn’t Philippa Stroud been suspended – she clearly thinks the same thing?”
Hague: “Well I hope she doesn’t think the same thing and she’s made the statement that I referred to yesterday about her current views, and about the suggestion that she is in favour of discrimination against gay people would be false. I think she has put that right.”
He clearly wants this story to go away, but what if this story is true? Don’t anyone let this drop. Religious extremism, despite what Hague wants you to think, is not the same as straightforward bigotry – it’s far more insidious, and at the heart of a new Tory government it would make the Thatcher years feel like a walk in the park.
What About Philippa Stroud?
Philippa Stroud is the Conservative Party candidate for Sutton and Cheam. She’s also the head of the Tories’ Centre for Social Justice, which guides the party’s thinking on social policies, and for this election its mania about the ‘family’. According to The Observer, Philippa Stroud is also the founder of an evangelical church which tries to ‘cure’ people of being gay:
Abi, a teenage girl with transsexual issues, was sent to the church by her parents, who were evangelical Christians. “Convinced I was demonically possessed, my parents made the decision to move to Bedford, because of this woman [Stroud] who had come back from Hong Kong and had the power to set me free,” Abi told the Observer.
“She wanted me to know all my thinking was wrong, I was wrong and the so-called demons inside me were wrong. The session ended with her and others praying over me, calling out the demons. She really believed things like homosexuality, transsexualism and addiction could be fixed just by prayer, all in the name of Jesus.”
Is this the party you want in government? One whose social policy thinktank is headed by someone who thinks this is ok? I mean why not just make a manifesto commitment to witchcraft? If David Cameron becomes Prime Minister on Friday, her views will be heard and acknowledged at governmental level. Would Section 28 just have been the tip of the iceberg for this thoroughly unreconstructed, nasty party?
And for that matter why hasn’t anyone interviewed her about this yet? And then there’s David Cameron, who professes to support gay rights, yet sees no problem with his MEPs voting against them. Last week homophobic Tory candidate Philip Lardner was suspended for his extreme, anti-gay views, yet Ms Stroud is allowed to continue as a PPC – could it be that ‘Dave’s’ support of gay rights goes only as far as his self-interest will allow?
