Hi, I'm Anouche. And I'm Ben. And on today's episodes of the New

Statesman podcast, we discuss Kate Forbes and Religion and politics and you

ask Ben your polling questions. So on today's episode we have a special guest

joining us in a bit, Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader. He's currently the

party's environment spokesperson and MP for Westmoreland and Longdale. He went

through quite a similar experience to what Kate Forbes, the SMP, MSP,

running to succeed Nicholas Sturgeon is at the moment having to answer

questions about how he feels as question about gay rights and other societal

issues. But before we speak to him, Ben, I wanted to ask you a bit about how the

public responds to politicians who say, you know, these kind of things about

society, let's go through some of the things that Forbes has said recently. She

said she would not have voted for the SMP's equal marriage legislation. Had she

been a politician at the time? She said having children and sex outside marriage

was wrong according to my faith. And she's also voiced her opposition to gender

self-idee. Tim Farron, I'm sure you'll remember, in the lead up to the 2017

general election when he was Lib Dem leader was asked repeatedly about whether

he thought that gay sex was sinful. How did the public respond to his answers

at the time? Do you remember? Yeah, it's a while ago. I remember the 2017

campaign. How intense it was for all of us covering it. No, I do remember a

lot of Lib Dem activists saying it hurt their base is saying it got mentioned,

saying that it really made people feel a bit uncomfortable because they

wanted to talk about Brexit. Because you remember 2017, this was the

...