MY friend’s mum would be the first to tell you that in times gone by she was “against the gays”. Like many of her generation and religion - Catholic - Agnes was taught from a young age that homosexuality was not only abnormal, but wrong and indecent.

In the early 1980s she would warn her daughter and me not to have anything to do with a lad in our class who was a “nancy boy”. I have no idea whether the boy in question was actually gay or not; indeed I can’t remember whether I even understood at the time what it meant. But I do recall the shock of hearing an adult mock a child. My pal and I never spoke of it again.

Until, that is, I met up with Agnes and her daughter a couple of years ago and we got talking about the old neighbourhood. When I mentioned the boy in question, the first thing Agnes said was how awful she felt about her treatment of him. I was quite surprised by how pained she obviously felt about something that happened some 35 years ago. She was still religious, she told us, but working with and treating many gay people over the years - she was a nurse - had opened her mind and made her realise it was wrong to be “against” something she now accepted was natural. “Live and let live” was the phrase she used over and over. Indeed, she had just accepted an invitation to her first gay wedding. I was moved and heartened; it was proof that humanity can and does progress.

I thought of Agnes while reading about the National Trust’s ill-advised and stupid decision to make all volunteers at a stately home wear Gay Pride badges. The volunteers at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk who objected - most of whom were elderly - said they felt uncomfortable about wearing the badges as part of the charity’s Pride and Prejudice event to mark 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales (Scots law didn’t catch up until 1980, of course). Instead of simply leaving it up to individual choice, the National Trust banned the objectors from dealing with the public, causing deep upset and a considerable tabloid furore. The charity eventually changed its tune, but the damage was already done.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s commendable that charities and other national organisations are commemorating and celebrating this legal milestone. Indeed, the recent clutch of TV and radio programmes on the issue have been notably marvellous, not least Against the Law, which includes moving and historically significant testimonies of men now in their eighties and nineties describing what it was like to live in fear of being criminalised, jailed, simply for loving another man.

This is why our hard-fought-for equality laws, which cover sexuality, gender, race and a raft of other issues, are so important and why we must act when they are flouted. But this is different.What a democratic society cannot and should not do is force people to hold particular personal views, even ones most of us agree are probably desirable.

Some of the volunteers may have refused to wear the badges because they actively disagree with what Gay Pride stands for. Others probably have nothing against it but simply don’t feel strongly enough to wave a flag. To suggest, however, that either way of thinking makes someone unfit to show people round a country pile is both bonkers and very, very wrong.

You cannot make people support Gay Pride or indeed any other cause or position. And nothing is more likely to harden any genuinely held position than the fuel of injustice. Would Agnes have had the time and headspace to reassess her attitudes towards the gay community if she’d continually had it rammed down her throat what a bad person she was, rather than being able to change her thinking through personal experience? I doubt it. People, societies, generations, progress in different ways and at different speeds, depending on many factors. That’s just the way it goes. Changing the law is one thing but changing attitudes is something else, requiring a more patient and nuanced approach.

Democracy, in my book, means putting the onus on free speech and resisting the temptation to send in the thought police whenever anyone says something mildly out-of-kilter with mainstream thinking. Talk and debate is healthy. But, as we can see from Donald Trump’s election in the US, making people feel wretched and disenfranchised, closing down viewpoints we don’t like, can be very dangerous.

The thought police comes in various forms, from the state to digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which, despite offering us so many positive freedoms, are also being used by some as a surrogate Big Brother to sniff out offence at every opportunity.

Real free speech means accepting we don’t have the right to be offended by everything we don’t like; it means holding our tongue and not lashing out, practising the art of persuasion. It also gives us the perfect excuse to keep own critical faculties sharp.

I’m certainly not perfect; I often struggle to do any of the above. The National trust, and Agnes, will inspire me to do better.