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As an older gay man I remember clearly that it was the UK government that decriminalised gay sex in certain circumstances in 1967 but resistance from the Scottish establishment and people delayed similar legislation for Scotland until 1980.

It was a UK government in 2000 that brought those acts into line with legislation on heterosexual age of consent.

While the Scottish Parliament repealed Clause 28 in 2000 and before the UK did likewise for the rest of the UK, I understand the process of doing so here was protracted by bitter campaigns led by one of the SNP’s biggest donors.

Even the recent passage of the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill was accompanied by recriminatory campaigning by Scottish churches and other religious groups and their leaders. It passed because there was cross-party support for it just as there was for the similar act of the UK Parliament for England and Wales.

However, I believe that the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 was UK legislation that was formally accepted into Scottish law by one of the niceties of our parliamentary arrangements; perhaps memories of the hurtful battles here over Clause 28 were too raw for Scottish MSPs.

The Scotsman has published articles about another member of the clergy leaving the Kirk on the issue of gay ministers –yet another reminder that in Scotland equality and human rights are not a given.

Neither Alan Cummings nor Patrick Harvie MSP can claim, therefore, that gay or any other rights will be better protected by independence as the evidence is that we now enjoy many rights denied us in the past and brought about in the past 50 years by legislation of parliaments and assemblies across the Union, all of which have transformed my life and that of many others and so I have no fear of continuing under the Union.

(Dr) Alan Rodger

Clairmont Gardens

Glasgow