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.
Lots of people just don’t know what freedom is speech actually means. Speech isn’t a crime, but crimes can be committed by speaking.
If you kill someone with a hammer, you aren’t charged with possession of hammer - you’re charged with murder. If you hire a hitman to do the killing instead, you aren’t charged with “using speech.”
When that theoretical person is arrested for “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” they aren’t actually being arrested for their speech or their words, but for a separate crime that uses speech as a mechanism.
Speech is a marvelous thing that should be protected, but freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of using speech to commit other crimes.
I, for one, get angry at big gubment limiting my free spech to call people slurs at home depot just like how I get angry at big government for limiting my god given right to come and go as I please when I break into people’s houses and watch them sleep.
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You quoted cases that literally demonstrate my point.
It’s not the word “fire” that is the crime. It’s speech as a mechanism by which lawlessness or panic is incited.
Hate-speech is more nuanced, but can follow a similar pattern.
Take the sentance: “It’s time to cut down the tall trees.” The words themselves are fairly innocuous. But that was the trigger phrase for the Rwandan Genocide. Saying those words on the air was a call to murder all the Tutsi people. Speaking those words on the radio was not an act of free expression by the Interhamwe, but the start of a barbaric hate crime that killed nearly a million people.
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No. It isn’t. There’s nothing illegal about the word fire, or even saying it in a theater.
Go. Find that law and report back if I’m wrong. Give me a citation.
You know what - fuck it. I’ll do the leg work here and go into the most specific law I can find on the subject. It’s within the Municipal Code of Ordinances Ordinances of the city of Reading, Ohio.
It sounds promising for you at first because it specifically mentions:
But that line §648.07(A)(1) only applies as a subsection of §648.07(A), which is:
And to further clarify that the crime isn’t the words, §648.07© specifically states:
Whoever violates this section is guilty of inducing panic.
Subsection B is about allowing fire drills as an exception.
So, according to the most-specific law I could find, the crime is inciting panic, not any specific word or phrase. And even if you did shout fire it isn’t a crime unless it actually causes a real panic.
Also - I highly doubt you’ve taken more law classes than me. Just a hunch though: maybe you’re just a bad lawyer.
This is peak Reddit, now peak lemmy
If speech has a price, it’s not free
Speech used to commit a crime isn’t illegal. The crime being facilitated through that speech is.
If I assault you with a hammer, it’s not the hammer that’s the issue. Arresting me for it has nothing to do with the legality of hammers.
Agreed. It just becomes problematic when speech itself is redefined as crime, that is what I’m arguing against. And the the line with the consequences is not that clear either. Someone could read a book and go an kill someone. I personally think it’s a hard thing to really understand consequences of words.