Kezia Dugdale: Scotland’s progress in LGBT rights ‘fragile’

But she added: “Progress is fragile. Ask yourself if you’ve ever paused to check your surroundings before holding your partner’s hand on a night out.

“I still do – every single time.”

Ms Dugdale, who is now associate director at the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Public Policy, said the change 10 years ago to allow same-sex couples to tie the knot had “delivered equality”.

It also showed gay people “are not something different, something other, something less”.

She insisted 10 years of equal marriage was “a real milestone in our country’s recent history because it shows us how much progress we’ve made”.

Ms Dugdale added: “Gay people like me felt safer and more emboldened to live our lives openly.”

While she voted for the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act, external at Holyrood a decade ago, Ms Dugdale said to her “shame” she was not “out” at the time.

She added: “I was one of the 129 MSPs who voted on the legislation back in 2014 and I did so from the depths of my closet.

“To my shame now, I wasn’t out because I didn’t think I could be.

“I thought there would be a professional price paid for talking about who I loved and who I wanted to be with.”

The act was approved with 105 MSPs voting in favour and 18 opposed, with no abstentions.

Of those who voted against the bill, seven were members of the SNP, eight were Conservatives and three were Labour MSPs.

Ms Dugdale said she decided to keep her sexuality private after “growing up with the Aids crisis on the TV and the vilification of gay people that came with it”.

But, in contrast now, she said “gay characters in soap operas are 10 a penny” and “schools have LGBT clubs where kids are encouraged and supported to be who they are”.

Ms Dugdale said: “It’s light years of progress, but it doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by the passage of acts of law like the Equal Marriage Act.”