"I don’t know how people are going to respond and it terrifies me."

Last week, the UK’s Daily Mail published a very Daily Mail-esque piece exposing what young conservatives got up to after a conference in Manchester. Under the headline “Not very conservative behaviour!” were photos of the young Tories drinking, singing karaoke—and heading to a gay nightclub.

A small group was photographed speaking with a drag queen Theresa May outside G-A-Y, and two male members were caught kissing and holding hands. Now, one of those men claims the paper outed him against his will.

A 19-year-old Tory tells PinkNews he is devastated and concerned about his safety.

“At the moment I’m living in fear,” the unnamed wonk claims. “I don’t feel like I can even leave the house because of what people might say.” Asking to remain anonymous, he explained the person he smooched wasn’t his boyfriend—just another Tory he met at a Conservatives for Liberty event called Freedom Fizz. The two “hit it off,” he explains, and walked a mile to another bar together when the photographer caught them on camera.

“I started getting messages from a friend asking if it was me and they linked me to it,” he says. “That was first I knew about it.”

Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images

While some friends know about his sexuality, the teen says his family and community are “quite hostile to homosexuality.” After The Daily Mail published the photos, the young Tory says his father isn’t taking his calls and his grandparents are barely speaking to him, either.

“To be honest I’ve struggled with mental health for a long time,” he confessed. I feel like I’m going back into crisis. I know it’s an overreaction and I feel silly but I don’t know how people are going to respond and it terrifies me… I’ve had messages all day hassling me. I haven’t read them, I can’t bear to think what they say.”

The Daily Mail has since removed the photos of the two men kissing and holding hands, but have not responded to requests for comment.

Mike Freer, Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green, told PinkNews this year’s Conservative Party Conference was the most diverse he could recall, with many LGBT events sold out.

“It is wrong for the Daily Mail to out any gay man or women and the Party’s many gay activists should be able to take part in the Conference and enjoy it like every other delegate,” he added. No delegate, gay or straight, should have to worry about tabloids surreptitiously photographing them.”

There are now at least 12 openly gay Tory MPs in Parliament and a group called LGBT+ Conservatives has been active since 2006. (A 2015 PinkNews survey found that 26% of British LGBT people supported the Conservative Party, a 5% increase from the 2010 election.)

While more traditionalist than the Labor Party, The Tories are considerably more centrist that the GOP in the U.S.: Tory Prime Minister David Cameron shepherded equal marriage in the UK, which was legalized in 2014. “When people’s love is divided by law, it is the law that needs to change,” Cameron said in a statement at the time.

This year the Conservative government launched a national survey to understand the experiences of LGBT people in the UK. It closes on October 15.

LGBT Conservatives