LGBTQ MSPs across the political spectrum have spoken out about the prejudice they experience in Holyrood because of their sexuality, condemning the role of social media in stoking hatred.
The Sunday National spoke to the Scottish Greens’ Patrick Harvie, the SNP’s Emma Roddick, Scottish Labour’s Paul O’Kane and the Scottish Conservatives’ Annie Wells to hear more about their lived experiences and the importance of representation in Holyrood.
'Progress can be achieved’
HARVIE received a mixed reaction when he was first elected to Holyrood in 2003 – one journalist told him he “shouldn’t go anywhere near equal marriage or gay rights issues because people will think you’re just the gay one”.
One newspaper’s front page depicted Harvie as a “Green threat to the family” and had a two-page spread describing him as a “militant homosexual activist turned MSP”.
With social media now driving much of the political agenda, the kind of comments Harvie receives has changed.
“I’m a lot less active on Twitter. I’m constantly aware that if I’m putting something out on social media, or the party is putting out something in my name, whatever the topic, there’s a good chance that it will start to generate this kind of commentary from people using really grotesque slurs.”
In Holyrood itself, Harvie said most MSPs “don’t try to cultivate that kind of hostility”.
He added: “I think the Tory Party clearly are now much more explicitly willing to do that.
“When we debated equal marriage, Ruth Davidson made a very good speech in favour of equal marriage and then half of her own parliamentary group voted against her legal equality.
“Even through all of that, you didn’t have this deliberate culture war attitude of punching down against marginalised groups with enthusiasm, and that’s what the Tory Party do now.
“I would say they have changed profoundly for the worse.”
Harvie said a similar shift in “transphobia” could also be seen from Labour and the SNP, but that for the most part, “it’s at the volume of the dog whistle rather than the explicit attack lines”.
Looking ahead to the future, Harvie hoped that a continued push for inclusive education would help to tackle this kind of prejudice in the long term.
He added that there needs to be a “wide discussion about how social media companies bear responsibility for what they’re publishing, and how the media have a responsibility too”.
“I think it’s really important not to lose heart and not to lose hope, and to remember that prejudice of many different kinds – whether it’s homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, gender-based violence, racism – were all absolutely the norm a couple of generations ago,” Harvie said.
“Progress can be achieved. These movements come and go - we’ll probably never be free of them, but they can be defeated, and societal progress towards greater equality and human rights can happen.
“We know that because we’ve done it already, and we’ll only continue to achieve that through solidarity, with different marginalised and minoritised groups standing with each other.
“It’s only because they managed to split people against each other that they begin to win.”
‘There aren’t more homophobes in politics, they’re just more bold’
RODDICK was elected as an SNP MSP for the Highlands and Islands in 2021 and was most recently equalities minister, stepping down after John Swinney’s appointment as First Minister in April.
During her time in Holyrood, Roddick said she had experienced prejudice from her first meeting as an MSP.
“In my first meeting as an MSP, someone was veering towards LGBT-phobia and I realised, ‘oh God, this is normal’,” she told the Sunday National.
“In the bar, folk were joking about who might be gay, and it felt like I was back in primary school.
“I don’t think there are more homophobes or more misogynists in politics, I think they’re just more bold.”
Growing up, Roddick said she “resented” the expectation “that you represent, that you’re out and proud and you have to share that”.
“Straight people aren’t expected to do that,” she said.
“There’s always that conflict where you’re expected to be proud, but you’re also expected to never talk about your sexuality, or that it’s apparently all that you talk about.
“Now I get that it is important, so if there are people in positions of power or influence, if you know it’s safe to do so, telling them that actually, ‘this is who I am, this is where I am,’ can be really helpful.”
Since becoming an MSP, Roddick has found that she now uses social media less as a result of the comments she receives online.
“I get criticism for that because people want you to be accessible, they want you to answer questions in a public forum – but you have to also protect yourself,” she said.
Roddick called on social media users to think before they publish a post, warning that the kind of language used to describe LGBTQ politicians ultimately impacts the way they are perceived.
“All the time I get things like child abuser, pervert, rape apologist thrown at me. When that is constantly what people hear about queer politicians, that has an impact, whether it’s conscious or not.”
'We all carry multiple and complex identities’
O’KANE was the first gay man to be elected for Scottish Labour in 2021.
“It was a really important moment, and something that was long overdue,” he told the Sunday National.
“On the whole, we had a lot of common purpose when we started, there was a lot to achieve in terms of supporting the most marginalised people in our communities.”
O’Kane pointed towards the LGBTQ cross-party working group, led by the Tories' Jamie Greene, as a good example of finding common ground.
Prior to becoming an MSP, O’Kane was a councillor for ten years, where the prejudice he experienced “used to be a lot worse”.
“I was the deputy convener for education services, and I remember having a couple of homophobic comments directed at me, saying ‘this person shouldn’t be responsible for children’s education’.
“It’s perhaps ironic that we’re still hearing some of those arguments about inclusive education,” he added.
But in Holyrood, O’Kane said that colleagues had “always” been respectful towards him.
“I think everyone would recognise that debates have become more toxic, particularly in terms of rights for trans people,” O’Kane said, referring to the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill which was passed in Holyrood in 2023 but later blocked by a Section 35 order from the UK Government.
“Parliament hasn’t always led by example in how we’ve discussed some of these issues.
“We all need to take a pause and reflect on our own behaviours and how we conduct those debates because this is people’s lives we’re talking about.”
These kinds of debates won’t stop O’Kane from speaking out about the issues important to him.
“We all carry multiple and complex identities, and my sexuality is inherently part of me, so it does interact with everything I do.
“I would never want to be pigeonholed because life is rich and complex and diverse, it’s all of those things that make up a person.
“But I’ll always stand up for the issues that are important to me and to so many of my constituents and beyond.”
'It’s not a nice place to be gay and a Tory’
WHEN Wells first entered Holyrood in 2016, her experience was “relatively okay”.
“For me, it was just about having that voice there. No-one had an issue with me at that point,” she said. “Now, it is slightly different, and I think the GRR bill made it so,” she added, echoing Harvie and O’Kane.
Wells voted against the GRR bill in December 2023, citing personal reasons.
“Because of my political allegiances, I feel as if I get pushed out of the community and I’m only useful when it suits.
“To me, that’s defeating the purpose – it's good to have LGBT people from every colour out there.
“I want to be an ally, I want to be a listening ear, but over the last two years, it’s not been a nice place to be gay and a Tory.”
When it comes to social media, Wells said she experiences more abuse for being a Conservative than for being gay.
“Social media is just a horrible place to be, but you need it to do the job,” she said.
“We need to look at the language we use, I think media has its place as well, and so do we [politicians] with the language we use when talking about other parties.
“I don’t need to read the comments, but my son can read them, my brother, my staff, my mum, especially when it’s something that blows up.
“It can be quite scary at times, but I don’t think they do that because I’m gay, they do it because I’m a Tory.”
The Scottish LibDems and Alba did not respond to requests for interviews.
