UNDER the new proposed hate crime legislation in Scotland, in principle, the police should be breaking down the doors of churches and arresting those handing out the Bible. It is, after all, material that presents homosexuality as a sin which could be seen as “likely” to engender hatred.

Unlike with English law, which needs “stirring up” hatred to be deliberate and threatening, in Scotland being abusive will be enough. In England, “intent” to stir up hatred needs to be proven. In Scotland this has purposely been removed so that it is easier to find someone guilty.

These are just a few of the concerns being raised about the new hate bill. Others include the future intention to create hate crime in relation to gender where only men can be prosecuted for hate. The feminist logic behind this is that women are oppressed, men are not; men have power and crimes against women express abuse of this power. Therefore, regardless of individual circumstances, motivations or intention, a man’s crime against a woman is hate, a woman’s against a man is not and never can be.

Hear we find one of the many problems of hate crime legislation – its ideological construction of groups carried over into individual cases of crime – this bastardises law.

As the new bill explains, policing hate is about policing prejudice, or about policing certain prejudices. In this respect it is worth bearing in mind that it was only Stalinist countries and fascist Spain which originally supported the idea of criminalising prejudice and hate in a UN vote in 1966.

Today Scotland is leading the way in the criminalisation of wrong ideas. Indeed, organisations could be held accountable for “hate” – what this will mean for newspapers and for academic freedom in universities is unclear. The new bill even explains that it will, “result in interferences with the right to manifest religion under Article 9 of the Convention”. In other words, freedom of religion will be illegal in certain circumstances.

Fighting bigotry and prejudice is a good thing. Arresting people and putting them in prison for not only their actions but their thoughts is not. Left and liberal people, even Western governments, knew this to be the case in the not too distant past. Today in Scotland, yet again, we face another fight for the most basic of freedoms expected in a democracy.

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