Normally, I would say the answer is no. However, Angus MacNeil does unfortunately fail the hypocrisy test on two grounds:
Firstly, as I wrote earlier, he voted against the Sexual Orientation Regulations. In his view therefore, what a person gets up to in their private lives is fair game and legitimate grounds to be denied public services.
Secondly, his party accepts enormous cash donations from people like Brian Souter, who has similar views about sexuality. Despite the high handed role that MacNeil has taken about the cash-for-peerages scandal, we have heard not one peep from him on this issue.
On the other hand, it does appear that the Sunday Mail has quite seriously stepped over the line (credit: Iain Dale). On balance it probably should not have been published, at least in the way it was. But if it means and end to those ghastly hagiographic articles about MacNeil being an ‘honest crofter‘ and latter day Jefferson Smith, there will clearly have been a rather thick silver lining to this particular cloud.
James,
I have difficulty accepting your proposition that someone who may homophobic as a legislator loses a right to personal privacy that they would otherwise have.
It feels a bit like saying that people who believe in Scottish independence shouldn’t be entitled to British passports, or that people who murder should be in turn killed themselves.
Needless to say, also have difficulty in accepting that the Noes, including four of our MPs, are automatically homophobic (you don’t use that word but I take it that is what you have in mind) but that is a seperate question. The practical effect of these Regulations is a non-homophobic reason to object to them, for example.
He’s might be a hypocrite if he had backed some sort of Prohibition of Threesomes (First Base Only) Act but he hasn’t he’s backed what called be called the Prohibition of Certain Medieval Religious Beliefs Regulations.