Most countries celebrate their most successful authors.
My country is especially blessed with one treasured around the world — the brain responsible for the wizarding world of Harry Potter.
Yet our 21st-century Queen of Scots could face prison very soon.
Our “hate speech” ban came into force Monday, creating a new offense of “stirring up hatred” against protected categories — including based on transgender identity and sexual orientation.
Of course, nobody likes to be hated.
But the law is vague and far-reaching, without clear parameters around what the state decides could be “hateful” language.
Could it be illegal to state facts about women’s biological reality?
Could it be a crime to defend marriage between a man and a woman?
Depending on the context, nobody knows.
The legislation was proposed in 2020, and I responded with my first-ever comment piece.
I warned J.K. Rowling could face jail for tweeting her beliefs under the future law — one of the Western world’s most severe crackdowns on speech, making it dangerous even to discuss biological reality with your kids at the dinner table.
“Free” speech could suddenly cost seven years behind bars.
Humza Yousaf — then justice minister and author of the censorial bill — disagreed.
In an interview the following month, he stated emphatically that Rowling would not be punished for her public “gender critical” tweets.
The bill passed.
Police Scotland had to implore the government to delay enacting the law.
It faced an overwhelming rise in “hate” reports, with many from the “He said, she said” of the Twittersphere.
The forces needed time for “training, guidance and communications planning,” it said.
We waited. For three years.
That’s right — authorities had more than 1,000 days to address the real concerns raised when the bill went through Parliament.
Why was there so little clarity on which words or opinions met the threshold of “stirring up hate”?
Why is “transgender identity” a protected category but “female” isn’t?
Would using the “wrong” pronoun count as being “hateful”?
Would they really allow kids to report their parents for what they said in their own homes?
Yet here we are. The act came into force Monday — and it’s no April Fools’ joke.
We’re none the wiser as to how we can hold robust conversations about important social matters without risking a stretch in jail.
The best advice Police Scotland has given us is to beware the “Hate Monster” — an infantile campaign singling out white young working-class men as villains, warning them not to get angry and “before they know it” commit a hate crime.
Police will investigate every hate crime reported, we’re told — the same month it announced it will no longer prosecute 24,000 minor offenses.
Scotland will surely be the first country where offending someone’s feelings could come at higher risk of punishment than stealing their possessions.
The state is coming after people who say things it doesn’t like.
And that early reassurance from Humza Yousaf that Rowling would not be punished for her gender-critical beliefs?
Highly questionable.
Twitter is awash with activists declaring themselves ready to report her belief in biological reality to the authorities.
The great Scottish witch hunt is a tale as old as time.
It was historically easier to silence problematic women if they were called “witches.”
Today, they’re “hate monsters” who need to be locked up if they hold beliefs not mob-approved.
Indeed, it’s clear Yousaf hadn’t looked at the consequences of similar hate-speech laws across the world before making his claim.
In Finland, a parliamentarian and grandmother underwent criminal trial for a Bible verse tweet that questioned her church’s sponsorship of a pride event. Her case sits at the Supreme Court.
In Mexico, two politicians from differing parties have been convicted of “gender based political violence” and placed on an offenders’ register, simply for upholding their beliefs about gender and pronouns on Twitter.
There’s nothing to stop our hate-crime law from doing the same thing.
It might be April 1, but J.K. Rowling doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
She’s challenged Police Scotland to come and arrest her for essentially declaring a woman is an adult human female and calling out those who pretend otherwise.
She could be at risk — yet she’s shown stamina in upholding her convictions.
Will citizens with less money or influence be able to withstand the pressure?
Or will they stay quiet for fear of trouble?
It’s a dark day for the land once famous for freedom, culture, comedy and the great Scottish enlightenment.
Time will tell how quickly we descend into a “monster hunt.”
Lois McLatchie Miller is a Scottish free-speech advocate with Alliance Defending Freedom UK.