Mark Smith: What exactly is the First Minister's problem on progressive reforms?

I’m sorry to say it’s easy to see the same thing happening with gay conversion therapy. Nicola Sturgeon has said she will take action, most recently in April when she said the government would bring forward legislation to end the practice. But the First Minister’s big promise came with small print. The law would be changed, she said, “if the UK Government does not take serious action” and “insofar as the powers of the Scottish Parliament allow”. It has also now emerged that there’s going to be a consultation on the subject, which should set off a klaxon or two for people who believe that action is going to be taken any time soon.

The consultation this time round will be carried out by the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee whose convenor, the SNP’s Joe FitzPatrick, said the committee wanted suggestions on what the next steps should be. “We particularly want to know who you think we should talk to about this important issue,” he said, “and who we need to hear from.” The aim, he said, was to determine whether making conversion therapy a criminal offence was the right way forward.

But quite why the committee, encouraged by the government behind the scenes, should need to go through such a process is unclear. The First Minister’s views are beyond doubt; there’s also a considerable body of evidence already. I recommend the book Boy Erased by Garrard Conley. My colleague Susan Swarbrick also spoke to one of the people who’s been through the process, John Pendal, who was told he must "pray the gay away" every day for seven years. I’ve also heard and seen it myself on an Alpha Course: the founder, Nicky Gumbel, told me that practising homosexuality was a sin and the only way to be gay and Christian was to be celibate forever.

I would have thought that, in a progressive country, a consultation on protecting gay people from such practices would be unnecessary, but it’s happening for the same reasons that a consultation has happened – twice – on trans rights. The SNP has a difficult balance to strike between its progressives and its social conservatives, particularly amongst members of the Catholic Church in Scotland, which has been accused of promoting gay conversion by engaging with a programme that counsels gay people to remain celibate. And so, rather than big steps forward, the SNP takes baby steps instead. Or launches consultations.

There are two problems with this approach, the first of which affects how the SNP behaves on progressive issues generally. They said they would reform the anti-progressive council tax, for instance, but that would mean bigger bills for some people, so they keep saying it but take no action. They said they would reform the law on trans rights to make it fairer and more compassionate, but that enraged some feminists, so they keep saying it but take no action. On these issues and others, the SNP talks progressive but doesn’t walk progressive and it’s because of its efforts to please as many people as possible and upset as few people as possible and thereby hold the independence coalition together.

The second problem is probably more profound because it doesn’t just affect the SNP – indeed, it’s a disease of modern politics generally. Issues like gay equality require a particular kind of strong leadership because liberal, reforming leaders are likely to be ahead of the general population. We saw it with Section 28 some 20 years ago when the then Scottish Government abolished the law banning the promotion of homosexuality even though a large section of the Scottish public, led by the SNP donor Brian Souter, supported it. That’s what you have to do sometimes with controversial social reforms: lead public opinion rather than follow it.

The problem with consultations, and focus groups, and studies, and surveys, and petitions, and opinion polls, is that they can subvert that process and lead to politicians trying to reflect rather than lead opinion. This is the wrong way round on most issues and it’s certainly the wrong way round on LGBT rights. All the way through the reforming process, the Scottish public has shown itself to be deeply conservative on gay rights but then, when the law has been changed anyway, they have come round. The same has happened in other socially conservative parts of the UK, like Northern Ireland.

The challenge now for Nicola Sturgeon is how she reacts to the situation in the longer term. There will be voices in her party, and the wider Yes movement, who will counsel against banning gay conversion therapy just as they have counselled against changing the law on gender recognition. These voices may be hard to resist when they come from people who will have a vote in any future referendum on independence.

However, eventually, the road paved with consultations and surveys and delays “due to Covid” will come to an end and the First Minister will have to make a decision. I have no doubt about her commitment to LGBT equality – she is part of the liberal wing of nationalism that has no problem with gay and trans rights – but to turn the commitment into action, she is going to have to resist the instinct to be cautious for the sake of independence. She may lose some votes in the process, who knows, but the next step in LGBT equality is going to require more than a consultation. It’s going to require decisive action. It’s going to require leadership.

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