David Cameron has got some explaining to do about Philippa Stroud, who’s both bigoted enough and stupid enough to believe gay people should be excorised of their gayness:
A high-flying prospective Conservative MP, credited with shaping many of the party’s social policies, founded a church that tried to “cure” homosexuals by driving out their “demons” through prayer.
Philippa Stroud, who is likely to win the Sutton and Cheam seat on Thursday and is head of the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank set up by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, has heavily influenced David Cameron’s beliefs on subjects such as the family. A popular and energetic Tory, she is seen as one of the party’s rising stars.
[…]
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.”
It’s not every day you meet somebody insulting both gay people and Christians, as surely any Christian taking their religion serious will be offended by the idea that homosexuality is akin to demonic possession. It makes Philippa Stroud quite literally a fag hag, who thinks she can witch out the gayness. If you’re in the Sutton and Cheam constituency today, remember that…