JK Rowling has challenged Scotland’s new hate crime law in a series of social media posts - inviting police to arrest her if they believe she has committed an offence.
The Harry Potter author, who lives in Edinburgh, described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.
She said “freedom of speech and belief” was at an end if accurate description of biological sex was outlawed.
Earlier, Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf said the new law would deal with a “rising tide of hatred”.
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.
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Ms Rowling, who has long been a critic of some trans activism, posted on X on the day the new legislation came into force.
Oh no I’m embarrassing myself in the internet, how will I ever live that one down.
You are the only voice of reason in this thread. Free speech is important and laws like this will be abused and used to punish political opponents.
Its not abuse when the political opponent is a bigot using hate and violence to build a platform. For the millionth time, you are free to run out there, make an ass of yourself, and use all the slurs you want.
What you are NOT free to do, and what this entire conversation is about, is organizing and inciting people to commit a hate crime.
Its pretty interesting that these things were fine when we’re talking about the civil rights movement, but as soon as there’s a trans or gay person around, your rights are under attack for trying to kill somebody.
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How does this prove your point when we established like 30 seconds ago that we are not after douche bag bigots who just use slurs?
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Have you actually read the law? Because i’m getting the feeling this is all talk straight from your ass. The entire bill is mostly a consolidation of existing hate crime laws with sex and gender added to the protected classes. Section 4 is probably the one most of you read about on twitter and are basing your entire argument on, it defines that you’re not allowed to say things considered harassment or to incite hatred. You cannot just pester one person for just being gay. YOU can’t just post about how bad you think gay people are and ask others to agree, because you’re inspiring new people to harass others.
Section 9 goes on to expand on this, and very explicitly states that freedom of expression takes precedence and you cannot simply be arrested for criticizing a protected class. Meaning, you saying “i don’t agree with transgender people, a man should be called a man” is acceptable. You cannot say “transgender people don’t deserve rights” because you are harassing them directly.
The rest of the bill is mostly defining what classes are, and indicates that a lot of the provisions are meant to be used with other laws, it says “offense” a lot, which seems to be getting interpreted as “i am offended” when they’re actually defining it as a crime that has been committed. They specify an example that the bill does not apply if you simply assault a police officer, but if you shout something at him about his religion or asexual identity, the bill applies as this is a hate crime.
Here’s a link to a document that lays the bill out in layman’s terms:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/14/pdfs/aspen_20210014_en.pdf
So again, please explain your issue with the bill? You’re upset you can’t go out and harass gay people all day?
Glad that someone else actually read the law.
That exactly what I personally think is problematic, because I would fundamentally disagree that this is “directly” - but you are right that this is exactly that will be an offence under that law. The same goes for possession of inflammatory material (Part 3, Section 5, 47). Especially with digital media that seems rather murky.
Again I find Rowling opinion on trans people rather disgusting and genuinely damaging. But the law seems to me rather excessive. But maybe I’m missing something.
I think it makes a lot more sense if you look at this bill while thinking about communities and interactions in modern times - ANYBODY can have a twitter, youtube, tiktok, etc account and immediately have access to a platform where they can potentially speak to thousands of people, and some of them are pretty impressionable (thinking andrew tate) - so as a community leader you should have some awareness that people are going to act on your ideas because they look up to you. I think this bill is trying to limit cases like that, and also cases of bullying where people have been harassed to the point of suicide simply for their identity