This weeks CT column – you can read the original here
Scotland’s new hate crime law is no laughing matter
Most people and hopefully all Christians would agree that hate is bad. So, at a superficial level, it would seem that we should all be rejoicing at a Scottish government bill which bans hate. But as is so often the case in the world, things are not quite what they seem and words have different meanings.
None more so than in The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, passed three years ago. It was the brainchild of the then justice secretary for the Scottish government, Humza Yousaf. Yousaf is now the Scottish First Minister and his bill is about to become law on April 1st. Sadly it is no joke – other than to make Scotland a laughing stock throughout the world. It is one of the most draconian, authoritarian measures passed by a democratic government in recent times – and it has profound implications for the Church.
The bill will firstly turn any crime into an ‘aggravated offence’ if it is deemed to be motivated by hatred or prejudice. But the controversial part is that it will create a new criminal offence of behaving in an abusive manner ‘designed to stir up hatred’ against groups with certain protected characteristics.
Stirring up Hatred
The problem with the bill is that it does not clearly define what ‘stirring up hatred’ means. There are already considerable problems in Scotland with this. The main one is with the definition of hate crimes. Police Scotland have a working definition that if the ‘victim’ perceives it to be a hate crime, then it is. An additional problem with the lack of clarity about ‘stirring up’ offences is that Police Scotland define a hate crime as ‘any crime which is understood by the victim or any other person as being motivated, wholly or partly, by malice or ill will towards a social group’.
This means that the subjective feeling of a perceived victim, or of a policeman, could be enough to have you accused of a hate crime – one which carries a sentence of up to seven years. Take for example JK Rowling. If she tweets that a man cannot become a woman, she could be arrested for hate crime. Same for a Christian preacher who says that he does not believe that Muhammad is a prophet or a teacher who says they believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
There’s been a Misgender!
The police in Scotland have said they will investigate every report of hate crime, despite having recently announced that they would not be investigating every case of ‘low level’ crime, including apparently some cases of theft! If the TV series, Taggart, were being made today, instead of Taggart saying, “There’s been a murder,” he would be crying out, “There’s been a misgender.”
Police Scotland have also gone into full swing with their anti-hate propaganda, putting out a cartoon of the ‘hate monster’ and explaining that, “The Hate Monster represents that feeling some people get when they are frustrated and angry and take it out on others, because they feel like they need to show they are better than them. In other words, they commit a hate crime.”
White Working Class Men are Hateful
In an astonishing statement they give an example of the kind of people who commit hate crimes as those with “deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement”.
By targeting white working-class men as being more likely to commit hate crime, Police Scotland are breaking their own law. At least they would be if they were to be consistent. But therein lies the danger of this law. It has nothing to do with consistency or justice. As for ‘equality before the law’, that’s just so old-fashioned! Now we have the State creating a two-tier justice system where some groups are afforded ‘protected’ status and others are attacked.
We have been heading this way for some time. Back in 2018, I reported the police to themselves for hate crime over their ill-judged “Dear Bigots” post campaign. They replied that because the Scottish government campaign was not motivated by hate towards any particular group, they would not be taking any action – thus putting themselves in the position of breaking their own rule that the perception of the victim is what counts, and setting the Scottish government and its now political police wing above the law. Expect much more of the same after April 1st.
All Pervasive Police
This Act will pervade through all of Scottish society. Even children are to be targeted. School handbooks now explain that all hate crimes should be reported to the police. Journalist Jim Spence wrote in the Courier that Scotland is about to become a “two-tier society” where “some folk are given protection by the law from some kinds of hate crimes, while others will simply have to suck up abuse.” For example, “while it will be an offence to stir up hate against trans folk”, it “won’t break the law to stir up hate against women”, because astonishingly under this Act sex is not a protected characteristic.
Stuart Waiton, senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Abertay, Dundee, warns, “There is now a serious danger that lecturers will be reported to the police for simply expressing ideas that some students don’t agree with or like. We could even find students like Lisa Keogh, who was taken to a disciplinary for arguing that women don’t have penises, ending up with a police record, as every complaint is recorded by the police. This is likely to create a chilling atmosphere in universities.”
Sadly it won’t just be in the universities. The police are to set up Third Party Reporting Centres throughout Scotland where you can go and ‘clipe’ (a Scots word for snitch or tell-tale) on anyone. These reporting centres include a sex shop in Glasgow, a mushroom farm in North Berwick, and a demolished office block in West Dunbartonshire!
And then there are comedians and actors. The Herald reported on police training which encouraged officers to go after anyone who produces material deemed ‘threatening and abusive’. You could be prosecuted for a negative portrayal of a trans person in a play, for example.
But the thought police are not finished there. The hate crime law states that “giving, sending, showing, or playing the material to another person” will make you liable to prosecution. If you repeat a joke on the internet which someone in the ‘protected’ characteristic finds offensive, you could be guilty of a hate crime.
And as if that were not extreme enough, you could be reported for expressing ‘hate’ in your own home. As Jim Spence pointed out, “It’s a recipe for disaster cooked up by a liberal political class which thinks that you can expunge human emotions, sentiments, and behaviour, from real life.”
Scotland’s ‘Values’ with Imperialistic Ambitions
The delusions of grandeur from the Scottish government don’t just extend to thinking that by decree they can eradicate hatred in their ‘Scottish values’ paradise. No, they want to deal with the whole world. The law holds that anything that can be read in Scotland is to be considered as published in Scotland. So, I could be sued in Australia for writing something in Australia, if someone went to a sex shop in Glasgow to anonymously report me for a hate crime.
The opposition to this is strong, bringing together unlikely allies including The Christian Institute, the National Secular Society, the Peter Tatchell Foundation and the Adam Smith Institute, amongst others. Scottish Catholic bishops have also expressed concern, but the Church of Scotland has been strangely silent. And sadly, some well-know Christian MSPs have gone along with the party whip and voted for this ill-considered, authoritarian policy. It’s a great example of turkeys voting for Christmas.
Humza’s Unanswered Question
I asked Humza Yousaf, the architect of this new Scottish blasphemy law, the following question – a question which he has refused to answer. The last person to be prosecuted (180 years ago) under the old blasphemy law was an Edinburgh bookseller, Thomas Paterson, who advertised amongst other things “that the Bible and other obscene works not sold at this shop”.
Under the new law would an Edinburgh bookseller be free to advertise something like “the Quran and other obscene works not sold at this shop”? I think Paterson was wrong then and a bookseller would be wrong and unwise to do that today, but if Mr Yousaf’s law means that such a bookseller would be prosecuted then we have ended up in a far worse situation now than we have been for the past 180 years because we now have a blasphemy law which will be enforced. And the blasphemy is not against God, but against the Holy State and whatever it decides is ‘hateful’ (i.e. against their values).
Scotland the Basket Case
Scotland, a country once described as ‘the land of the people of The Book’, is becoming a great example of what happens when a country turns from its Christian roots and reverts to a kind of pre-Christian ‘progressive’ paganism. It becomes an authoritarian, confused and unjust basket case (with apologies to all baskets – who I hope will not report me!). May the Lord have mercy and turn us again!
David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.
Scotland’s Hate Crime Bill is a charter for the suppression of free speech
Orwell’s 1984 was written as warning: a wake-up call, if you like.
It seems that the “woke” have mistaken it for an instruction manual.
What’s coming next could make the witch-hunters of New England look well-meaning but misguided, the Stasi a bunch of bungling amateurs.
The Salem witch trials tortured innocent people to death in the name of religion.
Although this bill seems badly written, it’s only aimed at people who have committed crimes against other people and it’s not advocating killing anyone!
What a strange idea to suggest that if a law is not killing anyone its ok! The bill also is creating crimes.
Maybe it’s not advocating murder, but it seems fine with arresting anyone who speaks certain truths, such as “women do not have a penis.” Does the phrasing of this law mean that a Christian pastor can’t say “the Bible tells us that homosexuality is a sin”? or that “marriage was ordained by God between one man and one woman”…? Apparently it would be a crime to say, for example, that a trans woman is a biological male (which is true) but hate speech/crime against women is absolutely fine since sex isn’t a protected characteristic? And to think I’d been browsing online for an opportunity to visit Scotland next year. NEVER!
‘Ideas have consequences’ underlies this. So the naive bag of waffle, in a very odd way, circumspectly points to a core theistic truth. Odd how these fantasies develop, though, when people forget about original sin, to foolishly imagine they can fix utopia at the drop of a hat.
All being brought in by the very same SNP cult that many Christians supported and fell over themselves to put in power in their nationalist zeal. They were warned by prophetic voices so cannot complain now that the prophetic warnings are coming to pass. The whole of western society is going the way of the antichrist but does seem that Scotland is leading the way?? We were warned that the SNP were the worst of a very bad bunch but that wasn’t seen by many Christians and they supported them simply because they put the kingdom of Scotland before the kingdom of God. Harsh but true and we are now reaping what many in the church has sown? Many can vividly remember the froth and zeal from many Christians during the independence referendum and we now have to suffer the consequences of that delusion.
Two Scottish blogs which I follow sometimes have gender critical articles or comments. The authors have decided not to continue because they don’t need to aggrivation of accusations, poilice investigations by hostile police officers, and a trial in court. Even if they are found NOT GUILTY, or NOT PROVEN, the process will have been the punishment. They would rather discintinue than constantly self censor. That self censoring seems to be the nub.
I find myself wondering if Humza’s Islam is at the root of this. His LGBTQ+ religious views don’t mix very well with his Islamic vews. But Islam is utterly intolerant, and when in control af a country, totalitarian. Is he joining together an Islamic mindset with Woke intolerance?
reverend robinson you are bigot yourself and you hate LGBTI people go figure
I don’t hate LGBT people….I love them….and you are in trouble. Under the new hate crime law I could report you for hate speech – calling me a bigot because of my religion – which is a protected category….see how this works?!
Thanks David. I’m disappointed in Kate Forbes though perhaps her support for the bill means it is not as bad as we believe.
Perhaps we need to pray for courage and discernment in the face of such a bill.
Scotland is not alone. Canada is going the same route, as a very similar hate crime bill is being passed at the federal government level. The implications for Christians is staggering.
Anyone who’s lived in the populated parts of Scotland knows that the biggest problem in terms of hate is between (nominal) Irish Catholics and (nominal) Scottish Protestants, with the worst expressions coming at and around Old Firm matches. For decades the Scottish authorities have done almost nothing to address this problem. I suspect this new law won’t do a thing about it either.
NSR
It would allow police to intervene if someone is stirring up hatred of Catholics etc
I’m always opposed to vaguely written bills because they always are bad for minority rights.
If you are Jewish and somebody vandalizes your house with no clear motive then it’s quite natural to think it might be antisemitism.
I think there needs to be hate crime legislation to recognize the wider impact of such crimes and the random nature of the victims, but also without a legal recognition of anti minority feeling as a motive, some criminals go free.
We had a case in Florida where a man had been harassed by another man for months because he was a member of a certain minority. Then one day the aggressor shot his victim dead, but told the police it was self defense. The police initially seemed to accept this and reject the notion that hatred of minorities was even something that could be looked at. Thankfully under increasing public pressure they eventually arrested the murderer.
Sorry that’s a long way of explaining how people can get away with terrible crimes if hatred of minorities is not recognized as a motive