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Kate Forbes, religious beliefs and bigotry – a view from the US [1]
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Date: 2023-04
As a woman, I have long looked up to outgoing Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon as a role model of strong female leadership. As a trans person, I am also deeply appreciative of her principled stance on Scotland’s gender recognition bill, which passed the Scottish parliament but was then blocked by an increasingly transphobic Westminster.
It’s disheartening that Sturgeon is stepping down amid controversy over her consistent support for trans rights (she denies that the pushback on this issue is the reason she’s resigning). Her willingness to stand up for her convictions on trans equality, even under fire, is admirable. And it’s encouraging in a period when the transgender community is under vicious attack, in both the US and Britain.
I don’t presume to preach or prescribe policy to populations outside the US. But as an observer of UK politics from the other side of the pond, I have long felt a sense of solidarity with the cause of Scottish independence – especially since Brexit forced Scotland out of the EU, and now that the government in London is actively preventing progressive change north of the border.
So it’s been interesting – and somewhat eye-opening – to observe the current rift in the Scottish National Party over ‘traditional’ Christian values and LGBTQ equality, centred on the (now beleaguered) candidacy of finance secretary Kate Forbes to replace Sturgeon at the head of the SNP and the Scottish government.
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The ongoing row has generated an important discussion of what concepts such as coexistence, tolerance, pluralism and religious freedom should mean for the nitty-gritty of political praxis.
Unfortunately, the discourse around such matters includes a widespread tendency to distance religion from bigotry (even when bigoted stances are clearly religiously motivated), as well as a distorted understanding of ‘religious freedom’ that has been pushed to great success by the Republican Party here in the US. In the Scottish context, it’s more often expressed as ‘tolerance’.
Kate Forbes – whose personal piety as a member of the Free Church of Scotland, a socially conservative, evangelical Calvinist denomination, has never been a secret – was initially viewed as the frontrunner to replace Sturgeon. But she seemed to have blown her chances at becoming first minister when she admitted in an interview that she does not personally support same-sex marriage, and wouldn’t have voted for it had she been an MSP in 2014.
She went on to state that she considers trans men to be women and trans women to be men, and that sex is only a morally acceptable act in the context of a one-man, one-woman marriage. Amid the hubbub this understandably generated, some questioned whether Forbes could even be fully trusted to protect abortion rights.
They now seem quite right to have done so. On Monday, openDemocracy’s own Adam Ramsay broke the story that Forbes’ first position at Holyrood – she worked as an intern for MSP Dave Thompson, who is now a member of the Alba Party – was funded by the right-wing Christian, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ group Christian Action, Research and Education (CARE). Ramsay reports that CARE’s budget consists of almost £2m per annum, but where that funding comes from is undisclosed. He adds that during her time in office, “Forbes has granted considerable access to Christian right lobby groups. Almost 10% of her meetings as an MSP with registered lobbyists have been with representatives of ultraconservative groups, including CARE, the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute.”
Before the interview in which she admitted she would have voted against same-sex marriage, the question of what impact Forbes’ religious beliefs might have on her approach to governing raised a few eyebrows. Even so, she had the support of many prominent party members.
Veteran SNP politician Pete Wishart tried to shut down “all this rubbish about her religious beliefs” in a way I found reminiscent of Republicans’ (and unfortunately some Democrats’) vehemence over valid questions about the beliefs of Catholic extremist justice Amy Coney Barrett during Senate hearings vetting her for federal appointments. She now sits on the US Supreme Court, to disastrous effect on equality and civil rights.
In the brouhaha that began when the infamous interview dropped, some on social media attempted to decouple “real” religion from Forbes’ views on LGBTQ rights. One Twitter user, for example, asserted that “her homophobia and all the rest of it is just plain bigotry and nothing to do with religion.” But this very framing is an example of Christian privilege.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/kate-forbes-scotland-first-minister-scottish-national-party-religious-same-sex-marriage/
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