JK Rowling in ‘arrest me’ challenge over Scottish hate crime law
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.
Have as many opinions as you want, but if you spread shit like "we should exterminate the lesser races" and "trans people are rapists" you earn a vacation at the greybar hotel for abusing your right of free speech to infringe on other people's rights.
The question is where the line is drawn and how to make sure the state is not abusing those powers to suppress opinions that it sees dangerous. A good example are cases when protecting the children is used as argument for more surveillance. This seems foelr me to go along the same lines.
Sometimes the question of "Where do we draw the line" is an important, valid question that must be considered. Sometimes, the answer to that question can also be "I don't know precisely, but this is damn well over it."
I'm not saying that hack writer is necessarily to that stage, but we absolutely should not allow "But where do you draw the line" to turn into "Everything is permitted because what about splitting hairs."
Than I will rephrase the question. Who should draw the line and do you trust people in power to draw it in a fair way? What if conservatives are holding that power against opinions they think are dangerous?
I'm not totally familiar with how the Scottish legal system works, but wouldn't the line be drawn by a jury of peers, and not necessarily the people in power?
Good question. But than again - not sure you want to be judged on sensitive topic by a group of peers, I'm not a huge fan of that concept to be honest.
[Calling for the extermination of people based on race/ethnicity/religion/gender/disability]
[Discrimination based on race/ethnicity/religion/gender/disability]
|||||||||| THE LINE ||||||||||
.
.
[Literally 1984]
Most sane countries don't have a lot trouble with this.
Calling for extermination, I would agree on. Since it's more than an opinion it's a call to action.
I'm really curious for examples.