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Scotland’s first minister has described his new hate crime law as
“absolutely balanced” on the day the controversial legislation came into
force amid a barrage of criticism.

Humza Yousaf’s comments came as David Kennedy, the general secretary of
the Scottish Police Federation, said enforcing the Hate Crime and Public
Order (Scotland) Act 2021 would reduce public trust in policing and the
author JK Rowling, a prominent critic of the legislation, dared the police
to arrest her for misgendering.

The Scottish government has consistently said that misgendering a
transgender person is not criminalised by the new law.

Yousaf said the legislation, which is intended to consolidate existing
hate crime laws, “absolutely protects people in their freedom of
expression” while guarding “people from a rising tide of hatred that we’ve
seen far too often in our society”.
The act, which was supported by MSPs from Scottish Labour and Scottish
Liberal Democrats as well as the Scottish National party, also creates a
new offence of “threatening or abusive behaviour that is intended to stir
up hatred” on the grounds of age, disability, religion, sexual
orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics.

The legislation has been criticised for not including sex in the list of protected characteristics, but the Scottish government plans to create a standalone offence to tackle misogynist abuse.

There have been escalating concerns about how the law will be policed and
how it could affect freedom of speech, with fears the legislation could be
used maliciously against certain groups for expressing their opinions, in particular gender-critical feminists.

But Yousaf said officers had been policing hate offences “very sensibly”
for decades, for example the offence of stirring up of racial hatred,
which has been in place UK-wide since 1986.

“Unless your behaviour is threatening or abusive and intends to stir up
hatred, then you have nothing to worry about in terms of the new offences
being created,” he added.

Earlier on Monday, Kennedy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the
law, which requires officers to assess “emotive” subjects such as online misgendering, would “cause havoc with trust in police in Scotland” and
would “certainly” reduce it,

In common with many critics who have raised concerns about the
legislation’s lack of clarity, Kennedy said he thought it would have to be tested in the appeal courts before the “real elements of the act” and how
they should be interpreted in law come into fruition.

He added that at a time of diminishing officer numbers, Police Scotland
had been allocated no extra money to provide training, and that
preparation was limited to a two-hour online module.

Rowling challenged the new law in a lengthy thread on X, saying the
legislation was “wide open to abuse” after listing sex offenders who have described themselves as transgender alongside well-known trans women
activists, describing them as “men, every last one of them”.

“It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence
and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the
current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to
call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland
if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” she
wrote.

Police Scotland said it had not received any complaints regarding the
post.

A demonstration against the legislation outside the Holyrood parliament on Monday was led by the campaign group Scottish Union for Education, which
also opposes the inclusion of transgender and race equality in the school curriculum. The protest was supported by the Scottish Family party, which
also opposes abortion and assisted dying.

Also speaking on the Today programme on Monday, the Scottish government’s minister for victims and community safety, Siobhian Brown, said she had
faith in Police Scotland to deal with vexatious complaints.

Brown underlined that the legislation included a very high threshold for criminality. She said: “What would have to be said online or in person
would be threatening or abusive, if you’re conveying a personal opinion
that is challenging or offensive that would not be … criminal.”

Police representatives have said members of the public could feel
aggrieved if their details were recorded by the force, having received a
report of a hate crime but decided the bar for prosecution was not met.
The threshold for these “non-crime hate incidents” appears to be lower and
more subjective, according to guidance.

There has been a marginal decrease in overall hate crime charges being
brought in Scotland. Racial crime remained the most commonly reported hate crime, followed by those with a sexual orientation aggravator.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/scotland-s-first-minister-defends- hate-crime-act-amid-barrage-of-criticism/ar-BB1kS8Le

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XPost: scot.politics, alt.freespeech, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
XPost: talk.politics.guns

Scotland's first minister has described his new hate crime law as
"absolutely balanced" on the day the controversial legislation came into >force amid a barrage of criticism.

Trump's bigoted and woke, and he's hated in Scotland because he's into
illegal Mexican slave labor.

Donald Trump will be greeted by at least two Mexican flags, placed near his Aberdeenshire golf course in Scotland, when he visits the country later
this week.

It’s a symbolic reminder of those he’s offended locally and internationally
and a sign that the presumptive Republican U.S. presidential nominee should
not expect a warm welcome after years-long contention surrounding the
links, locals say.

“He’s notoriously disliked here,” said Stan Blackley, an Edinburgh resident
who famously rubbed a yellow balloon on Trump’s head in 2012. “When he
comes, we can almost feel the hair up the spine of Scotland stand up.”

Blackley, a 46-year-old environmental campaigner, is one of many who oppose
the real estate tycoon’s presence in Scotland. Almost 600,000 people
earlier this year signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from entering the U.K. Many of the signatures came from Scotland, according to
The Atlantic.

“To some extent, I’m worried about his visit. He’s a blatantly racist,
sexist, misogynistic idiot,” said David Milne, who recently erected a
Mexican flag on top of his house near Trump’s International Golf Links
course. “We would be far happier without him being here.”

The 51-year-old has long been an enemy of Trump, and vice versa. (Trump
called Milne a “loser” in a tweet in late 2012.) Milne has been a vocal
critic of Trump and his developments after the mogul failed years ago to acquire his land and the homes of his neighbors on the Menie Estate.

The two Mexican flags fly to protest Trump’s arrival and the incendiary comments he made last year about Mexicans being “rapists” who bring crime
and drugs to America, he said. “It was in solidarity with the Mexicans and
now everyone else who has been threatened, harassed and intimated by this
man,” Milne told TIME on Wednesday. “I basically just want him to be aware
of the fact that we’re still here—another example that he has failed. He
did not chase us off our land.”

One Mexican flag adorns Milne’s home while the other, put up by another
major Trump detractor, stands 20 feet tall about 100 feet from the boundary
of Trump’s links. Many locals support its statement, Blackley and Milne
said. “Whether you’re anybody except Trump, he’s kind of said something
dumb and horrible about you,” Blackley said. “It’s solidarity.”

Trump, whose campaign did not immediately return a request for comment,
picked Scotland to build his golf course because he is half Scottish, he
says on the International Golf Links’ website.

He plans to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the rededication of the renovated Trump Turnberry golf course, south of Glasgow, on June 24 before
he visits his Aberdeen golf course on Saturday.

But locals may not roll out the welcome mat. “I don’t think very many
people want him here,” Milne said, adding that it’s “horrific” how far
Trump has come in the U.S. election. “They’ve seen that he’s unacceptable—someone who has been pulled out of the dark ages, basically a prehistoric Neanderthal.”

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