Kate Forbes’s religious views remain the only thing anyone wants to talk about in the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon. I expected as much. Forbes, a member of the Free Church of Scotland, has come under fire for saying that she wouldn’t have voted for same-sex marriage and that she believes children should be born within wedlock. She has stressed that she wouldn’t roll back any existing rights. These are personal articles of faith rather than policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, her views are out of step with Sturgeon’s and those of almost the entire Scottish political firmament.

Her political opponents – inside and outside the SNP – are aghast. A leading SNP figure suggested she withdraw from the race while a gay Labour MSP accused her of having ‘devalued my marriage’. The Scottish media has the scent of blood too. One Sturgeon-aligned red top has splashed Forbes across its front page with the headline ‘Love not Kate’. It editorialises that SNP members ‘must now make it clear to Forbes she is not fit to run their party’.

Forbes hasn’t hidden the fact that she’s a Bible-believing Christian, so it should hardly have been surprising when she confirmed in interviews that she believes the Bible. Yet a number of parliamentary colleagues have withdrawn their support in light of the backlash. Leviticus is not going down well on Twitter. I hope Moses can learn from this.

There’s all sorts of interesting stuff going on here. Note that Scotland has gone, in the space of just over 40 years, from a country where male homosexual acts were illegal to one where failure to believe personally in same-sex marriage – even as you support its legality – is a disqualifier for high public office. That is an extraordinary social change in an extraordinarily short span of time.

Note also that we have moved beyond the age of tolerance into the age of affirmation. It is not enough that Forbes pledges to protect the right to same-sex marriage in law. She is expected to affirm other people’s beliefs, even their marriages. This is not a healthy development for freedom of conscience and, just as worrying, implies that elected officials should be moral arbiters of the nation’s relationships and private affairs. Mary Whitehouse, if only you could see us now.

Forbes is reportedly determined to continue her leadership bid. If she does, it will show an almost preternatural resilience. (It’s almost as if she is fortified by some kind of Higher Power.) The consensus among the media and political class is that her campaign is dead in the water and some even suggest that her views on marriage make her unsuited to frontline political life entirely. It’s not just about elite opinion-formers. This morning I was on Call Kaye, BBC Radio Scotland’s popular phone-in programme, in the role of token bastard. A number of gay and lesbian callers phoned in to say they would feel less safe in a Forbes-run Scotland and to accuse her of showing a lack of leadership.

Scotland has gone, in the space of just over 40 years, from a country where male homosexual acts were illegal to one where failure to believe personally in same-sex marriage – even as you support its legality – is a disqualifier for high public office

While I have no doubt these feelings are sincere, I don’t think they are supported by the facts before us. Forbes hasn’t said or done anything to suggest she would harm people in same-sex relationships. Indeed, she has reminded interviewers that she is bound by the Scriptural injunction to love her neighbour. She hasn’t expressed hatred of gay or lesbian people, of transgender people, of unmarried couples, or of the children produced by those unions. She has simply stated what her creed teaches while separating its doctrines from her job as a maker of law and policy. Kate Forbes believes that same-sex marriage is explicitly forbidden by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and yet she is still determined to protect its status in law. That, to my mind, is leadership in action.

I feel conflicted about Forbes’ bid to become SNP leader and First Minister. I respect her and consider her highly talented. I’m also instinctively sympathetic to people who find themselves the target of a mob. But I don’t want her to win. They might not realise it but she would be the best thing that could happen to the SNP. She’s young, smart, savvy and moderate. She projects managerial competency. She would appeal to business, boomers, rural voters and the North East. She would tempt away Tories; older, socially conservative Labour voters; and some Remain-voting Unionists. People who don’t like politicians would like her.

Worst of all, they would listen to her. Independence is dead in the water because Sturgeon banged on about it so much the punters were fed up listening to her. Many voters have never even heard of Forbes. They don’t know she’s every bit the constitutional ideologue that Sturgeon is. She would be a fresh face, talking to them in achingly reasonable terms, in that middle-class cadence that Scottish people defer to for some reason. I’ve listened to her speak about independence and she almost makes it sound… sensible. Give me Humza Yousaf over that any day.

For these not terribly noble reasons, I don’t want Kate Forbes to win. But I don’t want her to lose because she’s a Christian. Nor do I want her to lose because she committed the gravest sin in politics and answered a question truthfully. If she does, it will confirm our ongoing drift from liberalism and its guarantees of the individual’s liberty of expression and conscience. It will confirm that the old intolerances are being replaced with new ones.