Keep the Clause campaign

Results
	Votes	%
Yes	1,094,440	7001868000000000000♠86.80%
No	166,406	7001132000000000000♠13.20%
Valid votes	1,260,846	7001991100000000000♠99.11%
Invalid or blank votes	11,356	6999890000000000000♠0.89%
Total votes	1,272,202	100.00%
Registered voters/turnout	3,970,712	7001320400000000000♠32.04%

The Keep the Clause campaign was a privately funded political campaign organised in 2000 with the aim of resisting the repeal of legislation known as Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 in Scotland and the United Kingdom, which forbade local authorities to "intentionally promote homosexuality". (Clause 28 was known as Section 2A of the relevant Scottish legislation). The campaign involved the first privately funded referendum to take place across Scotland. The campaign was ultimately unsuccessful.

Most active between April and December 2000, the campaign coincided with the first legislative attempts to repeal the clause that began in February. A major part of the campaign was a private poll organised in Scotland, funded by Brian Souter , the Scottish co-founder of the Stagecoach Group, at the time the country's largest privately owned public transport company. Souter supported the poll to the tune of £1million

Amidst the campaign came the 2000 Ayr by-election. The Scottish parliament seat of Ayr shared its boundaries with the Westminster seat, which had until 1997 been held by the Conservatives for almost a hundred years. In the 1999 Scottish parliamentary election the seat had been the most marginal in Scotland, with Labour winning over the Conservatives by a mere 25 votes. The Keep the Clause Campaign sought to influence the outcome of the election, campaigning in the area and buying up billboard space. Souter later claimed to have successfully influenced the by-election, with the by-election being won by the Conservative candidate, who had opposed repeal of Section 28. Labour's George Foulkes attacked the Keep the Clause Campaign, claiming there had been a "distortion of democracy" and that the Keep the Clause Campaign had outspent all the candidates combined.

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