Members of the Scottish Family Party protest alongside supporters of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill outside the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, ahead of a debate on the bill. Picture date: Tuesday December 20, 2022..It’s around this point in the conversation that the Cabinet Secretary’s political antennae ought to have begun vibrating energetically. Urgent demands for officials to select literally any other day on the calendar should have begun forming on their lips.
All of which is rather irritating – as it has yet again emboldened the many folk in Scottish political life who are having a rare old time peddling fiction about what’s actually in the Hate Crime Act and painting dystopian pictures about the new and terrifying. And what’s curious is it is generally critics of these proposals who are most determined to pretend the Act says things it doesn’t say and criminalises behaviour it doesn’t criminalise.
Let’s come down to brass tacks. The first part of the legislation codifies how crimes can be aggravated by prejudice, the second consolidates new offences of “stirring up hatred” against minority groups.books for decades. Before, they were scattered all over the Scottish statute book piecemeal – which is why Lord Bracadale recommended codification was needed.
And if white nationalists descend on communities distributing leaflets for “punish a Muslim day”, I’ve no issue with the police investigating and executing warrants against them for it. Describing provisions like this as “madness” is just lazy sloganising.
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