The Sun has come in for criticism after deciding to publish a poll in the wake of David Laws's resignation asking if gay people should be allowed to be cabinet ministers.

Today's Sun poll, which was conducted by research firm YouGov, asked three questions relating to the resignation of treasury chief secretary Laws after he admitted paying rent to his partner, James Lundie.

The third question, "Should gay people be cabinet ministers?", has caused a social media backlash on Twitter criticising the Sun's decision to ask such a question.

A total of 89% of the 958 people polled by YouGov either actively supported or were accepting of gay cabinet ministers, with 13% saying it is "a good thing" while 76% did not mind. Of the rest, 5% did not have a view and a further 5% said that gay cabinet ministers were "a bad thing".

The Sun poll also found that only 7% of people thought Laws's resignation would permanently harm the coalition government, while 72% believed that he was right to stand down for breaking MPs' expenses rules. However, 17% said that he should stay as he is "basically honest and we need his talent".

The Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn has also added fuel to the fire, opening his column with the line, "To be honest, I've always considered all Liberal MPs to be homosexuals unless furnished with concrete proof to the contrary", as an eye-grabbing way to push his argument that the Laws resignation is about stealing.

In 1998 the Sun infamously questioned whether Britain was being run by a "gay mafia" in a front page splash after political columnist Matthew Parris said in a television interview that Peter Mandelson was "certainly gay".

The then-editor David Yelland made a statement a week later that the Sun was to change its approach to homosexuals in public life. "The Sun is no longer in the business of destroying closet gays' lives by 'exposing' them as homosexuals," he said at the time.

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