JK Rowling, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are fuming over Scotland’s hate crime law. Here’s why.
www.politico.eu
A legal shake-up aimed at protecting minorities angers high-profile opponents on freedom of speech grounds.

It was no April Fool’s joke.

Harry Potter author-turned culture warrior J.K. Rowling kicked off the month with an 11-tweet social media thread in which she argued 10 transgender women were men — and dared Scottish police to arrest her.

Rowling’s intervention came as a controversial new Scottish government law, aimed at protecting minority groups from hate crimes, took effect. And it landed amid a fierce debate over both the legal status of transgender people in Scotland and over what actually constitutes a hate crime.

Already the law has generated far more international buzz than is normal for legislation passed by a small nation’s devolved parliament.

  • honey_im_meat_grindingEnglish
    32·
    9 months ago

    (the UK hasn’t got free speech as an enshrined right)

    In practice, does the US?

    Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, false statements of fact, and commercial speech such as advertising. Defamation that causes harm to reputation is a tort and also a category which is not protected as free speech.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions

    It seems to me there are a lot of exceptions to free speech in the land of free speech. I wouldn’t see any harm in adding hate speech to the list given how large it already is.

    e.g. passing a nearly-identical law copying Thailand about the royal family and putting in prison anyone who calls Prince Andrew a pedophile.

    That seems more of a problem with flawed democracy or autocracies, than to do with free speech. Any awful thing could become law under a flawed democracy/autocracy. The UK has plenty of undemocratic elements and they’re abused to pass horrible laws right now, and we need to fix those elements - the laws are just the end result.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Yeah but what about, just… you know the whole vibe of the thing. I mean these people are really loaded and successful and they just do what they want and I’m drawn to their gravitas because my own life seems so hopeless and just don’t seem to be able to control my own television let alone an entire government so whatever they think and say is just an amazing breathtaking righteous truth bomb.