Kate Forbes and Scotland’s Fragile Pluralism
By Aodán Hill, European Conservative.
When a Christian politician dares to deviate from progressive morality, tolerance goes out the window.
It was just over a year ago that a rare political furor erupted in Scotland, a country whose politics are rather bipartisan and straightforward. In one camp are the nationalists, who support Scotland’s separation from the United Kingdom and re-establishment as an independent state. The other camp consists of the unionists, who oppose this. When one of the camps has internal difficulties, the other side will predictably use it as an opportunity to score cheap political points. But the sudden resignation of the first minister and the ensuing leadership contest in the centre-left Scottish National Party (SNP) changed this. The young finance secretary, Kate Forbes, stood for the position against the controversial health secretary Humza Yousaf and the gender-critical feminist Ash Regan.
Forbes announced her campaign two days after Yousaf and Regan did, returning from maternity leave after the birth of her child. She had established an image as a sensible, fresh face for the party. She was a young mother and a Gaelic speaker from the Highlands. But a coordinated attack was launched on her before she had even unveiled her intention to stand.
She was a fundamentalist. A bigot. A homophobe. A representative of the ‘far-right.’ Some even said that she was backed by the American right-wing. It is certainly true that Forbes is on the Right of the Scottish National Party, but the SNP is a centre-left party, so this ‘Right’ is no more right-wing than Tony Blair was. Nevertheless, it is important to ask why she was labelled these things? The answer is simple: she is a Christian, and quite uniquely in British politics, she is a Christian who is not ashamed of her religion, her beliefs, or her identity.
Forbes is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, or the Wee Frees. They are conservative Presbyterians, and as such she upholds their moral beliefs. She believes that extramarital sex is wrong, that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, and that abortion is wrong. In other words, her moral beliefs line up with those of Christianity. They are rooted in Scripture, early Christian writings like the Didache and those of the Fathers, and by the progenitors of the Reformed tradition. Crucially, Forbes never made it a point to campaign on these issues. She only expressed her personal moral beliefs when she was asked about them by a journalist. Indeed, she even made a point to say that she would not legislate them into society at large.
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