These slippery Tory non-denials over Stroud will only fuel further suspicions

UPDATE, 5/05/10, 14.30: On legal advice, a more recent, related post has been deleted.

Meanwhile, Liberal Conspiracy today has further details about the general media inattention to the Stroud story.

ORIGINAL POST:

By now, many people will have read both the original allegations against Tory PPC Philippa Stroud in today's Observer, and her rather curious non-denial denial.  Stroud's statement reads:

I make no apology for being a committed Christian. However, it is categorically untrue that I believe homosexuality to be an illness and I am deeply offended that The Observer has suggested otherwise.

However, what Stroud here denies in not what The Observer alleges.  The Observer alleges that Stroud either believes or once believed that homosexuality and gender identity issues are caused by demonic possession, and that prayer, by driving out the demons, can 'cure' the possessed person.  And the newspaper further avers that Stroud has herself attempted to cast a demon out of a teenager who was sent to her by evangelical parents:

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."

These are allegations that Stroud's statement fails to acknowledge, let alone rebut.

Iain Dale, who often volunteers himself as firefighter for his party when stories about anti-gay Tories begin to smoulder in the press, posts today in defence of Stroud.  What he does, however, is  put words in her mouth.  Dale claims:

Philippa Stroud categorically denies the Observer's implication that she believes homosexuality is an illness or can be cured.

But Stroud's statement does not deny that she believes homosexuality can be cured: Dale has pulled this out of thin air.

Tim Montgomerie also addresses the Stroud story, albeit reluctantly.  He is a close friend of hers, and admits, candidly enough, that his first thought was to try to ignore the allegations against her to death, rather than confront them.  Convinced, however, that the story could not be ignored, he reproduces her statement of non-denial, with emphases added as follows:

I make no apology for being a committed Christian. However, it is categorically untrue that I believe homosexuality to be an illness and I am deeply offended that The Observer has suggested otherwise.

Montgomerie's choice to embolden 'it is categorically untrue', but not the words that follow immediately after ('that I believe homosexuality to be an illness') makes it appear, to the casual eye, as though Stroud's statement was a far more comprehensive denial of the Observer allegations than in fact it was (since it was not, of course, any kind of denial).

Montgomerie also refers to the Observer piece as 'gutter journalism'.  But he does not adduce any evidence to back up that jab (e.g. evidence to show that the interviewees either do not exist, or were misrepresented by the journalist).  Rather, in effect, he merely asks his readers to accept it as an article of faith that the story is unfounded.  Much as Nadine Dorries also did when, on Twitter, she invited Gaby Hinsliff to accept that 'Philippa Stroud would never, ever lie'.  (Though Nadine may be right about Stroud's truthiness, note.  Because she has yet to deny the specific allegations against her in the Observer, Stroud would not be rendered a liar, even if the story turns out to be true.)

Whether or not there is any truth to The Observer story, the reaction to it from Stroud herself, and from other Tories trying to defend her, has been evasive at best, disingenuous at worst.  Far from helping to bury the story, they may encourage the asking of further awkward questions.