Kenny Farquharson: Stand firm on gay marriage, Alex

If ever there was a time for holding firm on principle, this is it

GORDON Wilson was the first politician I ever met. I was 12 at the time and my father, an SNP supporter, was taking my brother and me to the party’s Dundee headquarters, up a close in Panmure Street, to collect posters for the October 1974 general election campaign. Coming down the stairs were the SNP’s two parliamentary candidates for the city, Gordon Wilson and Jim Fairlie. To my youthful eyes they were impossibly glamorous, resplendent in dark Crombie overcoats. They were the smartest-dressed men I had ever seen. Hey, I was from the Hilltown, what did I know?

As a political journalist I had dealings with Wilson on a number of occasions, and I found him fascinating, if not exactly likeable. Sickly looking, with permanent dark bags under bead-like eyes, he could at first seem frail. In fact, he was pugnacious and combative, dogmatic in argument, with a speaking style that was a cross between a bark and a growl. Sitting in the office of his law firm in Dundee, a spartan shrine to the colour beige, he would react to questions or ideas he didn’t like with an irritable dismissiveness.

I came to recognise him as a very specific kind of Dundonian – one who hails from the douce seaside suburb of Broughty Ferry and who exemplifies its mannerly social rigidity. (Bill Duncan’s book of short stories The Smiling School for Calvinists contains a character from Broughty Ferry who claims never to have set foot in Dundee, a place infested, he believes, by “hoors, comic singers, sand-dancers and mince-worshippers”.)

My impression of Wilson was reinforced last week when I read his intemperate attack on the SNP government’s proposals on legalising gay marriage. Now speaking in his capacity as a spokesman for the Christian lobby group Solas, the former SNP leader said the move was of “such a destructive nature to Scottish society” it should be put to the people in a referendum. With biblical foreboding he warned: “You attack the essential building block of society at your peril.” The view from Broughty Ferry was echoed by the Catholic church, with Cardinal Keith O’Brien saying SNP backing for gay marriage would “shame” Scotland and “forfeit” the support of Catholics.

Old-school conservative Presbyterian nationalism and the might of the Catholic church – a new and formidable alliance. But will it get its way?

The SNP’s relationship with Catholicism has been fascinating to watch over the years. Traditionally, Scotland’s Catholics were wary of the Nationalists, fearing an independent Presbyterian nation might by less than kindly disposed to Catholic schooling and Catholic values. But Alex Salmond found a friend and ally in Cardinal Tom Winning, frequently enjoying a supper of spaghetti bolognese cooked by the cardinal’s own hand in his private residence. The symbiotic relationship between Labour and the Catholic church in many parts of Scotland became looser. Catholic antipathy to the more liberal aspects of Tony Blair’s premiership dislodged it further, and in this year’s Holyrood election the SNP actually won the support of a majority of Catholic voters. This is an extraordinary and historic shift, and it perhaps goes some way to explaining some of the SNP government’s misjudgments on moral issues.

In August 2008, this newspaper revealed how the SNP had caved in to pressure from the Catholic church over the annual vaccination programme for 30,000 Scottish schoolgirls aged 12 and 13 to protect them from cervical cancer. The advice from sexual health experts was that to maximise the vaccine’s effectiveness in cutting cancer rates and STIs, jabs should be accompanied by advice on safe sex. The Church balked at this, insisting any printed material given to the girls should not mention condoms. Not only did SNP ministers cave in, they agreed that no mention of condoms would appear in vaccination literature going to any Scottish school, Catholic or otherwise. Bizarrely it meant non-denominational schools were forced to implement Catholic policy on sexual health.

This was not an isolated incident. Less than a year later, in May 2009, SNP minister Fiona Hyslop lobbied Whitehall on behalf of the Catholic church, seeking an opt-out from equality legislation allowing gay couples to adopt. The SNP argued that Catholic adoption agencies should be able to refuse to deal with same-sex couples seeking to take on a child. This was despite Holyrood passing a law in 2006 backing same-sex adoption and Westminster legislation that meant all publicly funded bodies providing public services could not discriminate against gay people.

The question now is a simple one. Will Alex Salmond once again try to curry favour with the Catholic hierarchy? Will he shade the SNP’s position on gay marriage in a way that sanctions a backbench rebellion against the initial Scottish Government line? Or will he stand firm?

Until recently, Salmond was not a man who readily stood up against vested interests. Teachers, trade unions, banks – show him a vested interest and his instinct was to pander to it. Recently that has changed, with Salmond picking fights with the legal establishment in the Supreme Court row (poor judgment) and chief constables over the plans for a single national force (sound judgment). The SNP leader’s stance on gay marriage to date is an admirable one and I applaud him for it. Given the homophobic comments of some SNP backbenchers, it has clearly caused him difficulties. But if ever there was a time for holding firm on principle, this is it. I look forward to the First Minister restating his backing for gay marriage in uncompromising terms when he addresses the SNP conference next weekend.