I have listened to Tim Farron’s resignation speech at least four times. Mainly, it should be said, out of admiration, but my curiosity as to why he resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats remains unsatisfied. Did he feel he had been forced into an approval of the morality of homosexual practice that in conscience he could not sustain?
Whatever the reason, the view he came close to expressing was that a politician’s personal religious beliefs should not come under public scrutiny. The suspicion he faced simply for being a Christian indicated, he said, that we still do not live in an open and tolerant society. Farron wasn’t questioning liberalism; he was saying we haven’t achieved it.