Facebook/CarolineAnsellEastbourneA Tory candidate is funded by a Christian organisation that hosts ‘gay cure’ events and tried to ‘heal’ LGBT people.
Caroline Ansell, the current Conservative Eastbourne MP received funds from the Christian Action Research and Education (CARE) charity, which paid for her intern.
The CARE intern was recruited to help Ansell four days a week from September 2016 until July 2017 – after the general election – at a cost of £8,470, BuzzFeed News can reveal.
Facebook/CarolineAnsellEastbourneAccording to the registers of MP’s interests, the intern is “voluntary” but receives a £770-per-month bursary, from CARE’s pocket as part of their gift to Ansell.
Ansell, who is hoping to return to parliament in the upcoming general election after winning a slim majority of 733 back in 2015, is essentially being funded by the same organisation that was exposed for bankrolling a 2009 conference which aimed to teach clergy members how to ‘convert’ gay people to heterosexuality.
CARE was outed in 2012, upon which time many politicians associated with the organisation – including Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron – abandoned all former ties with them and their sick practice of ‘praying the gay away’.
GettyBuzzFeed News also discovered that Ansell is a member of the Kings Church in Eastbourne.
Worryingly, Ansell’s church is part of a group of anti-LGBT churches, such as the King’s Arms Church in Bedfordshire, which was exposed in 2010 as attempting to ‘cure’ gay and transgender people of their “demons”.
AJ Paterson, a woman from the King’s Arms Church congregation, told Brighton and Hove’s GScene magazine:
There was an occasion where two of my close friends in the church came into my room and prayed over me; to heal me from my sexuality. There was a clear direction from the church that homosexuality was a sin and that it needed to be prayed for… They were trying to heal me of my ‘gay-ness’.
GettyIn a 2015 interview with Christian website, Heart, Ansell said that she would have ‘supported traditional marriage’ had she been an MP when same-sex marriage was being debated in the Commons.
In a statement, Ansell told BuzzFeed News:
During my time as an MP I have acted for everyone in Eastbourne regardless of their colour, creed or sexual orientation and there is no-one who will say any different because I have prided myself on fulfilling that role.
The fact is society should be tolerant of everyone’s beliefs and that is the message I take around my constituency and to parliament. It will also be the message I hope to see and advocate at Eastbourne Pride this summer, a new event for us which positively reflects the diversity in our town.
Facebook/CarolineAnsellEastbourneCaroline continued: “The intern from CARE was quite simply the best candidate for the job and I would hope that no-one would like me to discriminate against someone because they are a person of faith?”
I would also hope the same respect would be shown by all – regardless of their faith and its archaic doctrines – for people’s sexuality?
But, sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the world we live in. The best way to try and change that is by using your vote at the ballots on June 8.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.