KEZIA Dugdale has told a court she was entitled to accuse a pro-independence blogger of making homophobic remarks because she is a gay woman and understands prejudice.

The former Scottish Labour leader is being sued for £25,000 by Stuart Campbell, who runs the website Wings Over Scotland, after she accused him of writing “homophobic tweets”.

Giving evidence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, Ms Dugdale insisted she had labelled the tweet homophobic, and not Mr Campbell personally.

She said: “As a gay woman, I’m entitled to view that as homophobic because I understand what homophobia is.

“I’m entitled to my own view of what I consider homophobia to be. I’m a gay woman – I have experienced it in a number of forms.”

The row centres on a tweet Mr Campbell, 51, sent in March 2017.

He wrote that the Scottish Secretary David Mundell’s son, the Tory MSP Oliver Mundell, was “the sort of public speaker that makes you wish his dad had embraced his homosexuality sooner".

David Mundell came out as gay in 2016 and has described it as “one of the most difficult things” he has ever done.

Writing in her Daily Record column a few days later, Ms Dugdale said she was “shocked and appalled to see a pro-independence blogger's homophobic tweets”, and accused Wings Over Scotland of spouting "hatred and homophobia towards others".

Mr Campbell previously told the court he was “absolutely horrified” to be accused of making homophobic remarks.

He said the accusation was "self-evidently ludicrous" and insisted anyone who interpreted his remark in such a way was either dishonest or stupid – including gay politicians.

But Ms Dugdale, 37, insisted her honestly held view remains that the tweet was homophobic.

She said: “It considered, in my view, gay people to be lesser because they don’t have or can’t have children. So it was putting gay people in a negative light.”

She continued: “The fact that sexuality was referenced was to ‘other’ it, or to make it different.”

She later said: “He used David Mundell’s sexuality to suggest that it would be better if his son had never been born. I consider that to be homophobic.”

The Lothians MSP said homophobia comes in many forms, and some of them can be subtle.

She said she felt a responsibility to call out homophobia as a gay politician.

Asked by Craig Sandison QC, who is acting for Mr Campbell, whether she believed his client was homophobic, she said: “No, I believe what he said in his tweet to be homophobic.”

She said she had "never called him a homophobe”.

Sheriff Nigel Ross later asked her whether she felt a joke about a gay person was always homophobic.

She replied “If the butt of a joke is rooted in the sexuality of the person the joke is made about, then there’s every possibility that that joke is homophobic.”

She said she read Mr Campbell’s blog “from time to time”, but had blocked him on Twitter.

But Mr Sandison said a “recurrent theme” on the Wings Over Scotland blog was that Ms Dugdale was a liar, and suggested this had given her a negative view of him.

In occasionally testy exchanges, he said the target in Ms Dugdale’s Daily Record column was not the tweet, but the man.

She had then brought the issue up at First Minister’s Questions and asked Nicola Sturgeon to condemn and denounce Mr Campbell, not the tweet.

Mr Sandison also said Ms Dugdale’s legal team had previously claimed she did not know Mr Campbell was behind Wings Over Scotland at the time, or that it was pro-independence – something she confirmed was not true.

Ms Dugdale said this was down to a legal misunderstanding.

The MSP was giving evidence on the second day of the hearing.

Mr Campbell, who lives in Bath, previously told the court his tweet was a joke aimed at Oliver Mundell's poor public speaking during the 2017 Tory Party conference, the joke being: "I wish by some means or other you had not been fathered by your father."

He said: "I find the idea of any kind of discrimination against gay people to be absolutely abhorrent and always have done."

However, Colin Macfarlane, the director of LGBT campaigning organisation Stonewall Scotland, gave evidence on the same day stating the tweet was homophobic.

Appearing as a witness, he said: “It was an unnecessary reference, or drawing attention to David Mundell’s sexual orientation as a way to have a go at Oliver Mundell, but at the same time using David Mundell’s sexual orientation as a punchline.”

It came after fellow pro-independence blogger Paul Kavanagh, who writes under the name “Wee Ginger Dug”, defended Mr Campbell – insisting the tweet was deliberately crass, tasteless and insulting, but not homophobic.

Mr Kavanagh, 56, said he came out as gay in the early 1980s, when Scotland was “an intensely homophobic environment”.

The case will call again on Wednesday morning for further submissions. David Mundell told the court he could not appear due to the ongoing Brexit crisis, which the Sheriff accepted.