Scotland’s finance secretary has risked her political career by freely admitting to her belief that sex is for marriage and marriage is for one man and one woman.
Kate Forbes, 32, a frontrunner to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s first minister was elected to the Scottish parliament in 2016. She told The Scotsman that she would have voted against the bill to allow same-sex marriage, which was passed in 2014.
“I think for me, Angela Merkel [the former German chancellor] is the example I would follow, I would have voted, as a matter of conscience, along the lines of mainstream teaching in most major religions that marriage is between a man and a woman,” she said.
Forbes said that she is being attacked for her religion by an “illiberal” wing of the SNP because critics cannot fault her record in government.
She also said that she would have quit the cabinet over the gender recognition reforms that would allow people to change their legal sex through self-identification.
Asked by Sky News if it is wrong for people to have children outside of marriage, she said it is “something that I would seek to avoid, for me personally”.
“My faith would say that sex is for marriage and that’s the approach I would practice.”