The Scottish National party leadership hopeful Kate Forbes has said she will continue with her campaign to replace Nicola Sturgeon “at the moment”, after her personal faith-based views on equal marriage and having children outside marriage prompted an immediate and furious backlash. Forbes, who has been on maternity leave from her role as finance secretary, told the BBC the public were “longing for a politician to answer straight questions with straight answers” and later told STV she was “committed to seeing the campaign through, at the moment”. But many prominent backers swiftly fell away, while LGBTQ+ party members described their “anger and shock”. Forbes, a member of the socially conservative, evangelical Free Church of Scotland, initially told reporters on Monday she would not have voted for the SNP’s equal marriage legislation had she been an MSP at the time, just hours after launching her campaign. By lunchtime on Tuesday, the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch had lost at least half of her original MP and MSP supporters, as she doubled down on her “straight-talking”, telling Sky News that having children – and sex – outside marriage was “wrong according to my faith”. A source working closely with Forbes’ campaign acknowledged the past 24 hours had been “bruising”, but underlined that she had always been honest about her religious beliefs and that her refusal to “put up a pretence in order to win votes” was a sign of integrity. Forbes also said she would not challenge the UK government’s block on Holyrood’s gender recognition reform bill, and did not support self-identification for transgender people or extending the application process for a gender recognition certificate to 16- and 17-year-olds, views that echo many opponents of the changes.
Her comments revealed deep divisions between her and the frontrunner, the Scottish health secretary, Humza Yousaf, on equalities issues. Yousaf told a press conference earlier in the day that he backed Sturgeon’s positions on same-sex marriage, abortion clinic buffer zones, banning conversion practices and on gender recognition, confirming he would “absolutely” challenge Westminster’s use of section 35 to prevent the bill, which was supported cross-party in Holyrood, going for royal assent. The third candidate to put herself forward after Sturgeon’s shock resignation last Wednesday, Ash Regan, resigned as a government minister over Holyrood’s gender recognition bill. She released a statement on Tuesday afternoon that said she “firmly supported” equal marriage. Forbes told BBC Radio Scotland on Tuesday morning her views amounted to “fairly mainstream Christian teaching”. “I will defend to the hilt everybody’s right in a pluralistic and tolerant society to live and to love free of harassment and fear. And in the same way I hope others can be afforded the rights as people of faith to practise fairly mainstream teaching. That is the nuance that we need to capture.” Later in the day, speaking to STV, she said the furore had drawn out a “fascinating question at the heart of Scottish political discourse: what does liberalism mean? “Have we become so illiberal that we cannot have these discussions …Because if some people are beyond the pale then those are dark and dangerous days for Scotland.” Many LGBTQ+ members were aghast at her comments. MP Hannah Bardell posted at length on Twitter about how “hurtful and painful” Forbes’ comments were to her LGBTQ+ friends. The SNP activist Sarah Cheung said: “If Kate Forbes or Ash Regan gets elected as first minister, the progressives will walk and you can say goodbye to independence.” Cheung, who says she joined the party in 2019 “because of its pro-LGBTQ values”, added: “We all understand an individual’s right to practise their faith, but this should not be done at expense of our right to love. A new leader is supposed to unite the party so we can send out a message to Westminster that we want a fair and equal independent Scotland that treats all marginalised groups fairly.” A married gay man and prominent SNP activist said he had been considering backing Forbes, but that her comments on marriage equality were “completely irresponsible, dangerous and a million miles away from the SNP members”.