Kate Forbes’s religious views have sparked a backlash among her SNP colleagues. The party leadership contender’s announcement that she would not have supported gay marriage ‘as a matter of conscience’, led to four of her MSP colleagues distancing themselves from Forbes. And there could be more departures yet: earlier today, Forbes also let slip that she is personally opposed to childbearing out of wedlock. She said:
‘[Having children outside of marriage] is something that I would seek to avoid for me personally, but it doesn’t fuss me, the choices that other people make. In terms of my faith, it says that sex is for marriage and that would be the approach that I would practice.’
As Bale concluded, ‘the SNP membership is actually a little more socially conservative than some might imagine’.
So is Forbes’s leadership bid already scuppered? What really counts, of course, is how the SNP membership view her: they are, after all, the ones who get to decide who the next First Minister will be.
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