David Lammy cuts ties with gay cure sponsor

We missed this story that the Haringey Independent picked up on and just found it via a LInked-in connection.

From the Haringey Independent:

A Tottenham MP has pledged to cut ties with a far-right Christian charity which paid for an intern in his office after learning of their opposition to gay marriage.

Politician David Lammy said he would not continue to work with Christian organisation CARE – who paid an intern £5,500 to work in his office for a year from January 2011 - after a Haringey Independent investigation.

The group opposes gay marriage legislation set to be introduced into Parliament later this year and sponsored a London event in 2009 which discussed “therapeutic approaches to and understandings of same sex attraction” and “mentoring the sexually broken”.

Mr Lammy told the Haringey Independent: “My record on gay rights stands for itself and I’ll be voting in favour of the gay marriage bill.

“I’ve worked with CARE in the past on betting shops – which is an issue that still blights Tottenham – and I accepted an intern to help in my office which is the busiest in the country.

“But I had no idea that they held these views and my position now is that I won’t be taking another intern because I can’t agree with their extreme views.”

The Tottenham MP, who is a Christian, has voted strongly for furthering gay rights since being elected in 2000 – charity Stonewall gave him a 93 per cent score in a study of pro-equal rights MPs at the last General Election.

His decision to abandon CARE piles pressure on Enfield Southgate MP David Burrowes, who helped launched the Coalition for Marriage group on Monday and said he would continue to accept an intern from the charity.

The charity has provided the interns to 18 MPs as part of its Leadership Programme which it says places people with influential Christians in public life to gain experience.

END

In 2009 CARE co-sponsored a conference at the Emmanuel Centre in London. The conference programme shows that across the two day event, fourteen "sessions" were held by US gay cure therapist Lionel Nicolosi http://www.josephnicolosi.com/.

The attached spreadsheet from campaigner Phillip Dawson shows which MPs are involved.

If you'd like to make your voice heard against those MPs still working with CARE, you can sign a petition at change.org.