Julia Gasper

Julia Gasper is an English politician and independent scholar of 17th and 18th-century European literature. A right-wing activist, she is affiliated with the English Democrats and formerly belonged to the UK Independence Party (UKIP). A vocal critic of LGBT rights, she has attracted media attention for her negative comments regarding homosexuality and transgender identities.

In 1987, Gasper obtained a D.Phil. in English Literature from the University of Oxford. She converted her thesis, a study of Protestantism in the work of Thomas Dekker, into her first book. She later published books on Theodore of Corsica, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, and Elizabeth Craven, while also contributing entries to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Active in Oxford local politics, during the 2010s she served as a parish councillor for Risinghurst and Sandhills. She stood unsuccessfully as UKIP's candidate for Oxford East in the 2010 general election and then for Quarry and Risinghurst in the 2012 Oxford City Council election. During the latter campaign, her negative comments regarding homosexuality and LGBT rights activism attracted press attention from PinkNews and the Sunday Mirror. Her views were criticised by UKIP leader Nigel Farage and she stepped down as local party chair. Defecting to the English Democrats, she unsuccessfully stood for them in the 2014 European Parliament election and a 2014 Oxford City Council by-election.

Academic scholarship After studying at Somerville College, in 1987 Gasper obtained a D.Phil in English Literature from the University of Oxford. In 1990, Clarendon Press published Gasper's work The Dragon and the Dove: The Plays of Thomas Dekker. Reviewing it in The Yearbook of English Studies, John Stachniewski described Gasper's book as "trenchant and well-informed" and agreed with her thesis that Dekker's dramatic works reflected a militant Protestant ideology. Less convinced by this thesis was T. H. Howard-Hill in The Review of English Studies, who thought that Gasper's work was "thoroughly researched, well documented, and densely written" but also "disjointed, digressive, repetitive, and rambling". John Harmon reviewed Gasper's book for the English Studies journal, describing it as "crisply researched" and "eminently readable" although felt that she argued "somewhat defensively" that scholars should take Dekker's work more seriously.

In 2013, the University of Delaware Press published Gasper's book, Theodore von Neuhoff, King of Corsica: The Man behind the Legend. Reviewing it for the European Review of History, José Miguel Escribano Páeza thought the work was "interesting" and "exciting" but believed that Gasper constructed a "hagiographic image" of von Neuhoff, unconvincingly portraying him as a "military genius" and "seeing things in black and white by frequently presenting Neuhoff and his followers as heroes fighting against villains."

Gasper also contributed fourteen articles on 17th- and 18th-century subjects to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Political activity Gasper was characterised, by the International Business Times, as a "right-wing political activist". She had founded the Windmill Road Residents' Association and the Friends of Bury Knowle Library and by 2012 was also a parish councillor for Risinghurst and Sandhills in Oxford. She came fifth, with 2.3% of the vote (1,202 votes). Gasper then attracted local press attention with the claim that, on polling today, someone entered her house and urinated in her hallway.

In the May 2012 elections for Oxford City Council, Gasper stood as UKIP's candidate in the Quarry and Risinghurst ward. During this campaign, LGBT-themed news service PinkNews reported on a 2010 blog post she had written, to which they had been alerted by an Oxford resident. She compared herself to Salman Rushdie during The Satanic Verses controversy, and informed the Cherwell newspaper that she was the victim of "a malicious witch hunt". In her view, she told them, her opinions on LGBT issues were "very, very middle ground" and that she had said nothing homophobic. Roweena Russell, former chair of the International Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Youth and Student Organisation, then emailed Gasper to discuss her views; Gasper responded that Russell should be institutionalised as mentally ill. The newspaper characterised the comments as "extremist and offensive" and described the forum as containing many homophobic and racist statements.

Gasper then criticised UKIP as being "plagued with transsexuals", a reference to two trans women, Nikki Sinclaire and Kellie Maloney, who were party candidates. She described Maloney as "absolutely grotesque" and characterised her transition as "totally barmy – and how pathetic that he [sic] can do nothing better with his life." In May, former UKIP activist Colin Cortbus revealed to Cherwell that, in emails to him, Gasper had linked homosexuality and paedophilia, described Islam as "a severely oppressive ideology", and characterised the Quran as a "fascist" book comparable to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Olivia Marks-Woldman, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, publicly criticised the essay: "Whilst it is important to recognise the differences between the ways the Nazis persecuted different groups, this shouldn't lead us to question the fact that thousands of gay men suffered appalling persecution because of their sexuality."

English Democrats: 2014–2016

Disillusioned with UKIP, Gasper defected to the English Democrats. In August, she then stood as the English Democrat candidate in a by-election for the Quarry and Risinghurst seat on the Oxford City Council, coming last with 43 votes. In the May 2016 local election, Gasper retained her seat as parish councillor for Risinghurst and Sandhills.

Gasper's comments on LGBT issues continued to attract press attention. In April 2014, BBC News reported on her claim that, out of the 650 Members of Parliament (MPs), several hundred were gay and that this was a "violation of democracy". In the same post, she called for the gay dating app Grindr to be banned as a public health risk. A day later, she condemned World AIDS Day, claiming that it celebrated HIV/AIDS and homosexuality. The following week, she described campaigners for same-sex marriage as "queer thugs and gangsters" who "used violence, threats, censorship, abuse, and every form of dirty tactic". She hoped that "a twinge of guilt... kills them".

Later in May, Gasper blogged that there were "far too many homosexual comedians on TV", focusing her criticism on Graham Norton, "the horrid little" Alan Carr, and "the unctuous" Stephen Fry. The following month she criticised Oxford University's Bodleian Library for celebrating LGBT History Month; Gasper called this "a disgrace to Oxford" and maintained that "this unsavoury paedophile movement should have no publicity or promotion from any university." In February 2017, she again attracted attention after posting images of Jimmy Savile and Peter Jaconelli to her blog alongside the caption: "what could be more suitable for annual LGBT History Month than this heart-warming picture of two of Britain's most inveterate paedophiles hand in hand". Commenting in a Cherwell article, Samuel Rutishauser-Mills questioned why the media reported on Gasper's anti-LGBT comments, noting that as a parish councillor her "political significance is tenuous... and scarcely newsworthy or interesting."