Nicola Sturgeon, former First Minister of Scotland, has accused opponents to the Scottish Gender Recognition Act as “transphobic.”
The Scottish politician, who was speaking to mark the 10th anniversary of gay marriage being legalised in Scotland, reflected on her attempts to push through the Gender Recognition Act which was blocked from becoming law by the Conservative government at the time.
The bill would have allowed trans people to legally change their gender without the need of a medical certificate if they lived as their preferred identity for a minimum of three months.
She also accusing opponents of the act of using the debate to “cloak” their transphobia, misogyny and racism. She doubled down on this comment when speaking to Diva Magazine about the 10th anniversary of gay marriage.
The former First Minister said: “I’ve had more abuse hurled at me on the issue of trans rights than I have on probably any other issue in my career and I am a politician who helped lead an independence referendum.
“There are people who have muscled their way into that debate no doubt because they are transphobic but also because they want to push back rights generally. I do think that we need to be very vigilant about that as well.”
Sturgeon also shed doubt on how safe LGBTQ+ people feel in Scotland. She added: “We need to continue to tackle, deal with, and challenge at every single opportunity prejudice and intolerance wherever it exists and whoever it is targeted at. We live in a time where that is tougher to do.
“For most of my political career, saying things like that was seen as the right thing to do. Now it gets you accused of being ‘woke’ and somehow out of touch with people. That’s tough but doing the right thing, saying the right thing and standing up for what you believe to be the right thing is something I believe every politician should do.”
