Does Being Christian Disqualify Politicians from Leadership Now?

I n the late 1800s, Charles Parnell’s extramarital affair with Kitty O’Shea destroyed his career and arguably thwarted Irish independence. Back then, a person’s sexual practices were considered relevant to his political career. Such times have passed. Today, adultery is far from a resigning offense. Politicians, like everyone else, are free to live in sin even in residence at No. 10 Downing Street. Male politicians who dress up in women’s clothes are no longer called deviants but honored and celebrated as women.

Besides the criminal, there really is only one thing a liberal politician must not do when it comes to sex — and that’s aspire to higher moral standards.

Last week, Kate Forbes, the Scottish National Party’s 32-year-old finance minister and the most capable candidate for succeeding Nicola Sturgeon as first minister, knowingly broke this golden rule to stay true to her Christian faith.

The Cambridge-educated wife and mother has a track record of fiscal responsibility and political competence. She is a strong team player and bridge builder. As far as the Scottish National Party is concerned, she is also Scotland’s best chance at achieving independence. Yet in a campaign interview, Forbes disclosed that she would have voted against same-sex-marriage laws if she had been in office at the time, that her faith teaches that sex is for marriage, and accordingly that she believes that having children outside of wedlock is wrong.

All this, she expressed in the gentlest of ways, being sure to add that “the birth of a child should still be celebrated.” And reassuring voters that while she is personally opposed to same-sex marriage, she would not legislate to reverse existing law. As Forbes said calmly when pressed, it is “the mainstream teaching in most major religions that marriage is between a man and a woman.” Only a religiously illiterate person could find her views shocking.

Still, that is how secular public life in Britain has become. For her honesty, Forbes has lost the backing of several MSPs. Even the former conservative leader, William Hague, went as far as to say: “You couldn’t get elected leader of the Conservative Party now, with the view that she has.” Never mind a left-wing party.

The backlash Forbes received recalls that of Tim Farron, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, an Evangelical Christian forced to resign as party leader after feeling pressured to deny his beliefs. Farron later said that he regretted saying something he did not believe (that gay sex was not a sin) and ultimately concluded that “remaining faithful to Christ” was not compatible with being party leader.

“It’d be very easy for her to tell lies, just so that she could win that election,” Kemi Badenoch, the U.K.’s equalities minister, said while defending Forbes. It is interesting that Humza Yousaf, Forbes’s main competition in the SNP leadership race, has taken a different approach in explaining his beliefs as a practicing Muslim. Yousaf at first said that he was not “able to change what Islam says about gay marriage, or gay sex or what the mainstream Islamic view is.” But under sustained pressure he added that, despite his faith, he personally supports gay marriage. Still, Yousaf has failed to satisfy his critics as to why he missed the final vote on same-sex marriage in 2014.

What’s so ridiculous is how easily Forbes’s views can be defended on the merits. It’s worth noting that Forbes was fast-tracked into a cabinet position, finance secretary, only after the previous incumbent, Derek Mackay, bombarded a 16-year-old boy with sexually suggestive text messages. Mackay was a married father of two who left his wife and children in 2013 upon announcing he was gay. Forbes, meanwhile, who married a widower, is a devoted wife, mother, and stepmother.

For thousands of years, it has been a mainstream Christian belief that, along with everything else in creation, God has a specific purpose for sex: male–female complementarity, unity, and procreation within marriage. Since the earliest days of Christianity, Christians have understood sex in marriage to be an expression of love and, outside of marriage, to be an expression of lust — one that exposes its participants not only to spiritual harm but to heartache and disease, and any consequent unborn children to abandonment or violent death.

Trying to turn Forbes’s beliefs into a political freak show betrays a stunning ignorance about how widely held and deeply rooted they really are — a religious amnesia that is warping Western politics. True, there is no chastity month, or humility parade. Perhaps because people like Forbes don’t have anything to prove? Indeed, perhaps the Forbeses of this world are at peace with their choices and do not require anyone’s approval or validation to get on with their lives.

“Politics will pass,” Forbes said. “I was a person before I was a politician, and that person will continue to believe that I am made in the image of God.”