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Most folks and hopefully all Christians would agree that hate is dangerous. So, at a superficial degree, it could appear that we must always all be rejoicing at a Scottish authorities invoice which bans hate. But as is so typically the case on the planet, issues aren’t fairly what they appear and phrases have completely different meanings.
None extra so than in The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, handed three years in the past. It was the brainchild of the then justice secretary for the Scottish authorities, Humza Yousaf. Yousaf is now the Scottish First Minister and his invoice is about to turn out to be regulation on April 1st. Sadly it’s no joke – aside from to make Scotland a laughing inventory all through the world. It is without doubt one of the most draconian, authoritarian measures handed by a democratic authorities in latest occasions – and it has profound implications for the Church.
The invoice will firstly flip any crime into an ‘aggravated offence’ whether it is deemed to be motivated by hatred or prejudice. But the controversial half is that it’s going to create a brand new legal offence of behaving in an abusive method ‘designed to fire up hatred’ in opposition to teams with sure protected traits.
The drawback with the invoice is that it doesn’t clearly outline what ‘stirring up hatred’ means. There are already appreciable issues in Scotland with this. The primary one is with the definition of hate crimes. Police Scotland have a working definition that if the ‘sufferer’ perceives it to be a hate crime, then it’s. An further drawback with the dearth of readability about ‘stirring up’ offences is that Police Scotland outline a hate crime as ‘any crime which is known by the sufferer or every other individual as being motivated, wholly or partly, by malice or unwell will in the direction of a social group’.
This implies that the subjective feeling of a perceived sufferer, or of a policeman, might be sufficient to have you ever accused of a hate crime – one which carries a sentence of as much as seven years. Take for instance JK Rowling. If she tweets {that a} man can not turn out to be a lady, she might be arrested for hate crime. Same for a Christian preacher who says that he doesn’t imagine that Muhammad is a prophet or a teacher who says they imagine marriage is between a person and a lady.
The police in Scotland have mentioned they’ll examine each report of hate crime, regardless of having lately introduced that they’d not be investigating each case of ‘low degree’ crime, together with apparently some instances of theft! If the TV sequence, Taggart, have been being made in the present day, as a substitute of Taggart saying, “There’s been a homicide,” he could be crying out, “There’s been a misgender.”
Police Scotland have additionally gone into full swing with their anti-hate propaganda, placing out a cartoon of the ‘hate monster’ and explaining that, “The Hate Monster represents that feeling some folks get when they’re pissed off and offended and take it out on others, as a result of they really feel like they should present they’re higher than them. In different phrases, they commit a hate crime.”
In an astonishing assertion they provide an instance of the sort of people that commit hate crimes as these with “deep-rooted emotions of being socially and economically deprived, mixed with concepts about white-male entitlement”.
By focusing on white working-class males as being extra prone to commit hate crime, Police Scotland are breaking their very own regulation. At least they’d be in the event that they have been to be constant. But therein lies the hazard of this regulation. It has nothing to do with consistency or justice. As for ‘equality earlier than the regulation’, that is simply so old school! Now we have now the State making a two-tier justice system the place some teams are afforded ‘protected’ standing and others are attacked.
We have been heading this fashion for a while. Back in 2018, I reported the police to themselves for hate crime over their ill-judged “Dear Bigots” submit marketing campaign. They replied that as a result of the Scottish authorities marketing campaign was not motivated by hate in the direction of any explicit group, they’d not be taking any motion – thus placing themselves within the place of breaking their very own rule that the notion of the sufferer is what counts, and setting the Scottish authorities and its now political police wing above the regulation. Expect way more of the identical after April 1st.
This Act will pervade by way of all of Scottish society. Even kids are to be focused. School handbooks now clarify that every one hate crimes ought to be reported to the police. Journalist Jim Spence wrote within the Courier that Scotland is about to turn out to be a “two-tier society” the place “some people are given safety by the regulation from some sorts of hate crimes, whereas others will merely need to suck up abuse.” For instance, “whereas it is going to be an offence to fire up hate in opposition to trans people”, it “will not break the regulation to fire up hate in opposition to ladies”, as a result of astonishingly beneath this Act intercourse isn’t a protected attribute.
Stuart Waiton, senior lecturer in criminology on the University of Abertay, Dundee, warns, “There is now a severe hazard that lecturers shall be reported to the police for merely expressing concepts that some college students do not agree with or like. We might even discover college students like Lisa Keogh, who was taken to a disciplinary for arguing that girls haven’t got penises, ending up with a police report, as each grievance is recorded by the police. This is prone to create a chilling environment in universities.”
Sadly it will not simply be within the universities. The police are to arrange Third Party Reporting Centres all through Scotland the place you possibly can go and ‘clipe’ (a Scots phrase for snitch or tell-tale) on anybody. These reporting centres embody a intercourse store in Glasgow, a mushroom farm in North Berwick, and a demolished workplace block in West Dunbartonshire!
And then there are comedians and actors. The Herald reported on police coaching which inspired officers to go after anybody who produces materials deemed ‘threatening and abusive’. You might be prosecuted for a detrimental portrayal of a trans individual in a play, for instance.
But the thought police aren’t completed there. The hate crime regulation states that “giving, sending, displaying, or taking part in the fabric to a different individual” will make you liable to prosecution. If you repeat a joke on the web which somebody within the ‘protected’ attribute finds offensive, you may be responsible of a hate crime.
And as if that weren’t excessive sufficient, you may be reported for expressing ‘hate’ in your individual dwelling. As Jim Spence identified, “It’s a recipe for catastrophe cooked up by a liberal political class which thinks you can expunge human feelings, sentiments, and behavior, from actual life.”
The delusions of grandeur from the Scottish authorities do not simply prolong to considering that by decree they will eradicate hatred of their ‘Scottish values’ paradise. No, they wish to take care of the entire world. The regulation holds that something that may be learn in Scotland is to be thought-about as revealed in Scotland. So, I might be sued in Australia for writing one thing in Australia, if somebody went to a intercourse store in Glasgow to anonymously report me for a hate crime.
The opposition to that is robust, bringing collectively unlikely allies together with The Christian Institute, the National Secular Society, the Peter Tatchell Foundation and the Adam Smith Institute, amongst others. Scottish Catholic bishops have additionally expressed concern, however the Church of Scotland has been surprisingly silent. And sadly, some well-know Christian MSPs have gone together with the party whip and voted for this ill-considered, authoritarian coverage. It’s an ideal instance of turkeys voting for Christmas.
I requested Humza Yousaf, the architect of this new Scottish blasphemy regulation, the next query – a query which he has refused to reply. The final individual to be prosecuted (180 years in the past) beneath the previous blasphemy regulation was an Edinburgh bookseller, Thomas Paterson, who marketed amongst different issues “that the Bible and different obscene works not offered at this store”.
Under the brand new regulation would an Edinburgh bookseller be free to promote one thing like “the Quran and different obscene works not offered at this store”? I believe Paterson was flawed then and a bookseller could be flawed and unwise to try this in the present day, but when Mr Yousaf’s regulation implies that such a bookseller could be prosecuted then we have now ended up in a far worse scenario now than we have now been for the previous 180 years as a result of we now have a blasphemy regulation which shall be enforced. And the blasphemy isn’t in opposition to God, however in opposition to the Holy State and no matter it decides is ‘hateful’ (i.e. in opposition to their values).
Scotland, a rustic as soon as described as ‘the land of the folks of The Book’, is changing into an ideal instance of what occurs when a rustic turns from its Christian roots and reverts to a sort of pre-Christian ‘progressive’ paganism. It turns into an authoritarian, confused and unjust basket case (with apologies to all baskets – who I hope is not going to report me!). May the Lord have mercy and switch us once more!
David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.
