Questions over sinfulness of gay sex forced me to quit as Lib Dem leader: Farron
TIM Farron has revealed he made the decision to quit as Liberal Democrat leader two weeks into the general election campaign after facing repeated questions over whether he believed gay sex was a sin.
Mr Farron said he thought “there isn’t a way forward out of this” without compromising on his evangelical Christian faith or causing damage to his party.
He quit as Lib Dem leader on June 14, days after polling day, saying his religion had made him a “subject of suspicion”.
Yesterday he said: “I made the decision about two weeks into the election campaign.
“I thought there isn’t a way forward out of this without me either compromising or just causing damage to the party in the long run.
“I kind of thought, well, in which case I cannot see a way I will continue to be leader into the future.
“But I kind of thought, right you’ve got to put that into a drawer, don’t talk to anybody else about it, get on and do as good a job as you can during the election.”
Mr Farron’s shock announcement last month came just hours after the party’s openly gay home affairs spokesman Lord Paddick said he was standing down, citing “concerns about the leader’s views on various issues”.
The outgoing Lib Dem leader said he “compartmentalised” his decision to quit during the campaign and denied he had deceived voters who backed his party in the election.
He told 5 Live: “Well, they’re giving the party the vote, and the Lib Dems, thanks to what we’ve done in the last two years, will continue. So in every election there is a reasonable chance that leaders will step down.
“But I think, you know this yourself, when you make a decision and it’s in your head and you’ve not really shared it with anybody, not written it down, it’s there to be changed.”