It’s always useful to be told what we’re allowed to think. The news from the Kate Forbes leadership campaign is that you can’t make it in politics unless you swallow sex changes and celebrate same-sex marriage.

Fascinating. Especially since the former is actually very controversial – hence the backlash against the SNP’s gender ID reform – and the latter has only been the law since 2014. Even more interesting is that Forbes’ insistence that she wouldn’t try to reverse equal marriage isn’t enough. She is being pilloried not for her politics – which, in the sense of wishing to separate faith from existing legislation, is quite liberal – but for her incorrect values.

No, it is not enough to tolerate equal marriage. The political class can only support Forbes if she is enthusiastic about it. Hence she is reportedly losing ground to doe-eyed Hamza Yousaf, a Muslim who has suggested he’d vote for every LGBTQ+ right put before him. The modern world is happier with a politician like Yousaf than one like Forbes.

I’m also told that, as a Unionist, I should be enjoying all this – you know, seeing the SNP tearing itself apart. Maybe. A bit.

But as a Christian, I find it utterly depressing – a rerun of when Tim Farron was hounded for his faith, or of when David Amess couldn’t get the last rites after his murder, or when a pro-life activist was arrested for praying silently outside an abortion clinic. It leads one to ask: is this what the modern Union is all about? Is this spiritually ignorant culture what we’re fighting for against these convulsive nats?

I do not support or oppose political structures purely for the structure but rather the moral content they nurture. If the EU had been a genuine attempt to uphold European civilisation – as opposed to a trade-cartel-turned-super-state – I might have been more sympathetic towards it. I instinctively prefer our multinational Union on the grounds of its history and culture, yet the more that its history and culture erodes into an American-style liberal monolith (republicanism with a king and a Starbucks on every corner), the less appealing it looks. I struggle to see why I should be enthusiastic about a constitutional order that increasingly feels anti-Chirstian.

It is of no comfort to learn that within our Union, a Christian (Muslim, Hindu or Jewish Briton) cannot get elected without passing this year’s values-test that involves rejecting a millennia-old faith (and for an insight into the frightening efforts to police Islam, I recommend Peter Oborne’s excellent new book The Fate of Abraham).

The more that its history and culture erodes into an American-style liberal monolith (republicanism with a king and a Starbucks on every corner), the less appealing it looks

The UK establishment has picked a side in the culture war – hence it has made efforts to impose abortion access on Northern Ireland contrary to the spirit of devolution. Why not hold a referendum like the Irish did? Because the political class regards abortion rights as axiomatic and opposition to them as illiberal to the point of un-British. Some MPs actually feel it’s their duty to nudge the Church of England towards conducting gay marriages, as if the same demographic that gave us Iraq or the Credit Crunch is qualified now to debate theology.

This is silly and ahistorical, an attempt to define – and enforce – Britishness as ‘everything we have believed and done since 1968’, obliterating the memory of the faith-infused society we were before. In reality, the UK is about more than just a body of laws that advance and guarantee choice. It is meant to embody a culture that, if no longer Christian, at least has some sympathy for the handful of souls who continue to practise their religion against the odds.