UKIP leadership candidate David Kurten has been attacked by LGBT activists and slammed as “unfit for elected office” by party official Suzanne Evans following remarks he made on the nature of sexual orientation.
Pink News, an outlet covering “politics, entertainment, religion and community news for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community in the UK and worldwide”, took umbrage with Mr. Kurten, a London Assembly Member with science degrees from the University of St Andrews, the University of Bath, and the University of Southampton, over his answers to a Support 4 the Family survey.
In response to the question, ‘Is our sexual orientation (gay or straight) fixed at birth or not?’, the 46-year-old apparently wrote:
“The latest scientific studies show that incidence of homosexuality in adults decreases with age, so it is unlikely to be fixed at birth. Study after study also shows that the incidence of homosexuality is much higher among people who have been sexually abused as children. That is an issue which needs to be addressed but it is not because of political correctness.”
Later on, this statement was amended to read as follows:
“According to Lisa Diamond, a lesbian professor at the University of Utah, sexual orientation is often fluid and there is little evidence for a “gay gene” so it is unlikely to be fixed at birth. There are many reasons for sexual orientation, but some studies have concluded that the incidence is much higher among people who have been sexually abused as children. This is an issue which is often left unacknowledged because of political correctness, but needs to be addressed so that counselling and help can be given where necessary.”
Pink News reported this amendment, which is more detailed but not substantively different, as a “cover up”.
Ms. Diamond has previously stated:
“There is no single cause for sexual orientation… There are definitely genetic influences, but they are not deterministic. There is a lot of evidence for fluidity and change in people’s experiences of same-sex attraction.”
Kurten was defended from his detractors by former leadership candidate and Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam, describing him as the victim of a “witch hunt” by cultural Marxists and UKIP’s own “internal Leftists”.
1/ Fake news rag @PinkNews run by cultural marxist David Cameron buddy @benjamincohen is perpetuating a witch hunt against @davidkurten…
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) August 10, 2017
2/ The anti-science Left is trying to hang Kurten, a science teacher and conservative, just for answering a question honestly, using science
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) August 10, 2017
3/ This is as important as the Google case. UKIP's own internal leftists like @SuzanneEvans1 and @ukiplgbt are trying to suspend Kurten…
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) August 10, 2017
Kassam asserted that fighting efforts to “hang Kurten” are “as important as the Google case” — referring to the tech giant’s recent sacking of engineer James Damore for “perpetuating gender stereotypes” in a memorandum asking for greater tolerance of people with conservative viewpoints, and suggesting ways to increase female representation based on the latest sex science, rather than quotas.
The attacks on @davidkurten by @suzanneevans1 and @PinkNews convinced me to donate to his campaign. You can too: https://t.co/foaJULbFyy pic.twitter.com/fx2pzPj9dw
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) August 10, 2017
A recent study out of the University of California examining identical twins did suggest that sexual orientation is not fixed from birth.
Dr. Tuck Ngun found that there does appear to be an epigenetic signature for homosexuality in men, but it seems to be the result of changes brought about by environmental factors. Only one gay identical twin in five shares a sibling with the same sexual orientation, despite their common genetic blueprint.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.