An Enfield charity for gay people has called on David Burrowes to “completely disassociate” himself with a far-right Christian organisation that pays for an intern in his office.

Tim Fellows, manager of Enfield LGBT Network in Lancaster Road, said that it was wrong for the Enfield Southgate MP to have an intern paid for by the Christian charity CARE – which opposes gay marriage and sponsored a London event in 2009 which offered a ‘gay cure’.

Mr Burrowes has come under pressure to change his view from more than 250 people who joined a Facebook group after he said gay marriage was an issue was not something “people are hammering us on the doorstep to do something about”.

Mr Fellows said: “CARE is an organisation that holds incredibly strong views and for him to be facilitating that through accepting an intern from them is awful – it’s incredibly naive to think that they don’t place people in the seat of power to try to influence policy.

“He needs to completely disassociate himself from CARE and their extreme views.”

The charity pays £5,500 in sponsorship for an intern to work in Mr Burrowes’ office every other year, but both it and the MP deny that it is a lobby group or at any time has had any influence on policy.

CARE provides the intern as part of its Leadership Programme which it says places people with influential Christians in public life to gain experience.

Yesterday, Mr Burrowes told the Enfield Independent: “My views are that the values of marriage should be between a man and a woman and that is something which is set out in statute hundreds of times – if you change the shape of marriage then you change its purpose and risk changing the meaning of it.”

But Mr Fellows said that stance was “shameful”. He added: “He is saying that equality is not an issue, and obviously it’s a real issue for people here when it comes to gay marriage.

“He said people may not hammer him on the doorstep about it but his gay constituents may not want to come out on their doorstep to an MP who holds these views.

“We invited him to come and speak to us here and meet with our members about this but he has not responded.”

Mr Burrowes, who said he had received a death threat since publicly declaring his views, has voted strongly against furthering gay rights since being elected in 2005.

Gay rights charity Stonewall gave him a seven per cent score in a study of pro-equal rights MPs at the last General Election.

The MP joined other politicians on Monday to launch the Coalition for Marriage, which opposes the Government’s plan to legalise same-sex marriage.