WHAT is happening to the Greens? When I joined the party, I was working as an assistant to my friend Margo MacDonald, helping her to cover the 1983 election for local radio.

It was an epiphany when I read the manifesto of the then Ecology Party. Here was a party that was suggesting that we should cherish our planet and each other.

It seems obvious but mainstream politics had yet to include the planet on its balance sheet and even now the idea of “stewardship” as set out in this most magnificent of manifestos seems almost like a lost hope, some New Age fantasy.

READ MORE: Alyn Smith: Georgia's EU dream is a reflection of our own

At the heart of that manifesto was a sense of an essential unity of being. No religion required, just a sense we are all on the same side and that we should take care of each other and all of life.

Yet where is that vision now? Do today’s Greens embrace even a modicum of that nascent vision of Jonathon Porritt, who wrote that manifesto, to find meaning and purpose in caring for each other and the Earth?

For better, or worse, the Scottish Greens seem to be on a new trajectory. They appear to be in the thrall of their not-inconsiderable LGBT membership. I don’t have the numbers but I strongly suspect that this grouping is now essentially in control of the party.

Which brings me to an important point. One of the emerging trends within the Greens – and it is reflective of the wider issue of this social media age – is that if you do not align with current orthodoxy, you are by definition bad and beyond the pale. Let us consider some facts.

Andy Wightman, arguably the most credible and competent Green MSP of his intake, felt obliged to resign when he had the temerity to suggest that perhaps the party should at least consider matters raised by women’s organisations regarding the proposed Gender Recognition Reform Bill. He was offered mediation.

Andy can speak for himself but it seems to me this was not far different from being sent for “re-education” in Mao’s China or being given a political pistol and invited to go outside and do the right thing. Is this Green politics?

READ MORE: Caitlin Logan: Awareness is great - proper support for mental health would be better

And then we have Robin Harper, a selfless servant of the Greens. When elected he allowed himself to be called upon to be the Green MSP for all of Scotland, not just Lothian, as I’m sure his then PA and now Presiding Officer of our Parliament, Alison Johnstone, would confirm.

Yet last year he found himself before a Green star chamber for doubting the wisdom of proceeding with the Gender Recognition Reform Bill before having more information, not least the outcome of the Cass Review. Robin resigned from the party.

He acknowledged his disagreement with the policy of independence, but it was essentially his attempt to have a debate on women’s rights that caused Big Non-binary Brother/Sister to go after him.

So what do the Greens now stand for? Will they wake up and smell the environment, far less the vision of an essential unity of being – probably too much for many?

I don’t know but I sincerely hope that we see some debate and not some Orwellian script that tells me I have the wrong number of legs and so should be put down, or at least thrown out of the party for daring to suggest that all matters are up for debate – strange as that may seem to the social media generation.