In 1954 the Rev Kenneth MacRae — who as Free Church minister in Stornoway presided over what was then the biggest Presbyterian congregation in the world — wrote an impassioned article for The Scotsman about the government’s failure to protect the traditional resources of the Gael while enthusiastically touting tourism as the only salvation for Highland jobs.

“All this cry about development of the tourist industry is simply an insult to every Highlander who loves his country,” argued MacRae, as he prepared to savage the crippling weight of Highland freight charges and the continuing plunder of Hebridean fisheries. “We don’t wish to become a nation of flunkeys, to await the pleasure of our masters from the south.”

I thought of MacRae when I read about Stephen Nock of London and his run-in with a minor hotelier in Kinlochewe. Nock, 34, tried to book a four-day holiday in the Wester Ross township for himself and his boyfriend of five years, e-mailing to request a double room.

He was instead savagely rebuffed by Tom Forrest, the owner of the Cromasaig guest house. Insisting that “two gentlemen sharing” might enjoy only a twin room, Forrest wrote: “We do not have a problem with your personal sexual deviation — that is up to you. You are welcome to our twin room if you wish, but we will not condone your perversion.”

A huge imbroglio followed, with words such as “homophobe”, “poof”, “bigot” and “bent” being bandied about. “I am shocked and appalled that attitudes like that still exist,” Nock, a campaigns officer with Voluntary Service Overseas, told one newspaper. “My partner and I have never encountered anything like that before from any establishment. It really depressed me.”

He petitioned VisitScotland, whose Barbara Clark wailed sympathetically: “We are confident this kind of appalling attitude is not mirrored across the vast population of Scotland.”

The upshot? The tourist authority has removed Forrest’s guest house from its records but he remains robustly defiant. The Cromasaig website now announces that its double room is exclusively for the use of heterosexual couples or the occasional single guest.

“I do not go along with this word ‘gay’,” Forrest says. “They are not happy in that situation. I called them poofs and will continue to do that. ‘Gay’ is a word that means happy to me.”

This ridiculous episode is not entirely without precedent, especially in a corner of Scotland where evangelical religion retains some clout. A Harris landlady I know once politely declined to grant a double room to a homosexual couple and was reported to the local tourist board for her pains, while a ferocious Raasay woman once, rather more noisily, denied such a couple even houseroom.

The difficulty with such a stand, however, is that it can say a good deal more about the state of your mind than that of your hopeful guests. On one August night, when every B&B and each last bunkhouse berth in my Harris village was stowed out with guests, I met two young women on the road who were just off the ferry — on a very wet, unpleasant night — and who were desperate for somewhere to stay.

I invited them home to my big house — the only time I have ever indulged in the bed-and-breakfast trade — and was taken aback when they asked to share a big double room.

They were “colleagues”, they insisted. Well, I cannot see into people’s souls and I sensed danger in jumping to the most prurient conclusions and issuing a damning decree. Besides, the ladies might even think I wanted them separate the better to take advantage of them. So I let it lie. They were gone by early morning, leaving £40 and a nice note on my kitchen table.

It’s a dilemma, in our day, that will be faced regularly by any Highlander with a bed-and-breakfast business, although a little religious perspective might be in order here. Jesus, who, in his teaching covered much of human frailty, vice and folly, never once mentioned homosexual sin in His public ministry. It was the apostle Paul who warned us of things about which it is even “a shame to speak”, and the obsession of far too many Christians with homosexuality — highlighted in the silly Clause 28 furore four years ago — brings the Gospel into disrepute. But there is little evidence that our Mr Forrest is any kind of hard and fast Christian anyway.

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