"The Scottish govt has just held a "cosultation" over this issue, where the Scottish people were ask to give their views.
By a large majority, they rejected the proposed legislation to legalise same sex marriage."

It is seemingly not quite as straightforward as that. Of the responses that went in directly to Holyrood from individuals (ie not from the names collected by churches) the figure's are claimed to have been 50% against gay marriage and 49% in favour. However 19% of these responses actually came from people outside of Scotland and according to reports in the Guardian the vast bulk of these were anti with the suggestion being that they came from people linked to campaigns run by the Christian Institute and Christian Concern. So not quite the same as "the Scottish people" giving their opinion. Seemingly if individual responses from people within Scotland are counted it came down to about 65% in favour of gay marriage which ties in with the Mori polls on the subject.

What knocked the anti vote up further was the submission of petitions run by religious groups and in particular the postcards sent in by the Catholic Church. Seemingly 36% of total responses to the government consultation were these postcards. The Catholic Church gave out 200,000 preprinted cards declaring opposition to gay marriage with a space for the signature at the bottom. Only 28,000 were completed and handed back to the church. The vast bulk of Catholic parishioners ignored the cards. It was not a consultative exercise run by the church and there was no request for people to voice support for gay marriage. They simply ran a campaign to collect names.

Just saying in case people from outwith Scotland think that the country is full of anti-gays! There are statisitcs and statistics and damned lies. Yes we can say that of the names collected the majority were anti - but it is not the same as the people of Scotland actually giving their opinion in any kind of fair way. Presumably the govt pressed on with their plans despite the consultation exercise because they knew that many of the antis were either from religious campaigns outside of Scotland - or were from a rigged exercise carried out by a minority religious group within Scotland!