BBC: For many years Scotland just did not do gay. Homosexuality was dangerous and taboo, and it was actually against the law right up to the 1980s. So how did a country that seemed to take pride in its prejudices end up with the best gay rights in Europe?
Post-war Scotland was a deeply conservative place. In fact, half the country voted Tory in 1950 and most people attended the Kirk on a Sunday. Sex was rarely, if ever, mentioned.
If talking about the birds and bees in the 1950s was taboo then mention of the possibility of bees getting together with each other was totally forbidden.
Dr Jeff Meek, the author of Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland, says: "There was almost a bar on talking about same-sex desire."
He says homosexuality was something families, religious institutions, the medical profession and society at large all chose to ignore.
"Growing up queer in post-war Scotland is essentially occupying a social and sexual wilderness," Dr Meek says.
Acts of male homosexuality had been outlawed for centuries and were made stricter in the late 19th Century but same-sex contact between women had never been targeted in law and was not illegal.
Scottish society just chose to believe lassies did not do that kind of thing. » | Steven Brocklehurst, BBC Scotland news website | Saturday, November 28, 2015
