Ann Widdecombe is under fire after she suggested science might one day “produce an answer” to being gay.
Speaking on Sky News, the Brexit party MEP said she had once pointed out that there was a time when it was thought impossible for people to switch gender.
She added: “The fact that we think it is now quite impossible for people to switch sexuality doesn’t mean that science might not be able to produce an answer at some stage.”
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Her comments “sparked major fury,” The Sun says, causing social media to “erupt”, notes the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, the BBC said: “It will be deeply disappointing to the UK's LGBT community that elected representatives, and people with large public platforms not only hold these views but actively promote them.”
ITV News’ political correspondent Paul Brand explained that he has investigated “so called gay 'cure' therapies” and “you won’t find a single medical, psychiatric or psychological body that thinks science can provide an 'answer' to it”.
Politicians have rounded on Widdecombe. Conservative MP Justine Greening tweeted: “We don’t need a cure for love.” The former Tory MP Nick Boles said: “If only science could produce an answer to the blight of poisonous bigotry that is Ann Widdecombe.”
Also taking to Twitter, the Labour MP Luke Pollard wrote: “Utterly ashamed to be represented by this vile woman. Being gay isn’t a disease to be cured.”
The gay Labour MP Wes Streeting added: “Ann Widdecombe is a relic from a bygone era, whose petty prejudices are out of touch with the vast majority in Britain.”
Stephen Doughty, the co-chair of the LGBT+ Parliamentary Labour Party, asked: “Surely Nigel Farage will now be suspending her from the Brexit Party and removing the party whip?”
The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan also joined the fray, saying Widdecombe was “peddling homophobic nonsense”. Actor Stephen Fry asked: “But will science ever find an answer to Anne Widdecombe?”
This is not the first time that Widdecombe has caused a stir. In 2000 she told MPs she “rejected” the idea “that there is somehow equal validity between the homosexual lifestyle and marriage and family”.
In 2012, she blamed the “homosexual lobby” for “turning all its fire” on conversion therapy. She has also supported chaining pregnant prisoners, and described women's pension age activists as “self-indulgent and entitled”.
