A CANDIDATE in tomorrow’s city council election has received death threats after linking homosexuality and paedophilia.

Dr Julia Gasper says she is too scared to leave her house and is under police protection after her comments – which also say homosexuals should be grateful to hetrosexuals for giving birth to them and stop complaining of “persecution” – provoked outrage.

The comments were made in November 2010, but were re-printed by the gay-orientated Pink News website at the weekend.

Dr Gasper, who is standing for the UK Independence Party in the Quarry and Risinghurst ward tomorrow, said she had received death threats via emails and posted on her own website, where she made the original comments.

She wrote: “Homosexuality (as Jean-Paul Sartre said) is simply a form of behaviour, not like being black at all.

“Homosexuals are completely dependent on heterosexuals to create them. Curiously they never express any gratitude for this, while complaining constantly of persecution.”

Dr Gasper, the defeated UKIP candidate for Oxford East in the 2010 General Election, added: “We ought to reflect that there is a strong connection between male homosexuality and paedophilia. Why hush it up?”

Yesterday she stood by her comments about paedophilia. UKIP said the party did not share her view, but defended her right to hold it.

Police have refused to confirm or deny if they were offering her any protection, but Dr Gasper said: “I am now under police protection. Since Saturday I have had 200 emails demanding I should be killed.

“I can’t bring myself to read the messages any more. They say I should be electrocuted, aborted, pushed off a cliff, hanged.

“And others say they know where I live and are going to come and get me. So I’m scared. I’m too scared to leave the house.”

Oxford resident Tanner Efinger, 28, who entered into a civil partnership with Nick West last year, said: “What this shows is that this person, who is running for a public position, has a great deal of ignorance on a vast scale.

“It is important that this shows homophobia is still a real issue.”

Oxford Pride chairman Rafe Jeune said: “I find the comments abhorrent. She is a doctor, she understands reason and evidence-based opinion. There is absolutely no evidence, no research to find a link between paedophilia and homosexuality. It’s disgusting.”

Dr Gasper, an academic who sometimes lectures at Oxford University, is also a Risinghurst parish councillor and founded the Windmill Road Residents’ Association and the Friends of Bury Knowle Library.

UKIP spokesman Gawain Towler said: “UKIP does not share her view, nor do we support it. But we do support her right to hold those views.”