Official Idiocy in the UK

Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest

The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK has provided a definition and explanation of a "hate crime".  It's now illegal, if not to hate anything in general, certainly any specific individual or class or category of human being for his/her beliefs, thoughts, words, dress, behaviour, and so forth. 

Hate Crime: What is it?
The Association of Chief Police Officers and the CPS have agreed a common definition of hate crime:

"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender."
[Emphasis, ours]

Worse, it is to speak or act in such a way that a direct, or indirect, auditor of the speech or actions believes the speech and actions to be motivated by hostility or prejudice.
 The "hot areas" are presently limited to race, religion, sexual orientation, disability--not only in fact, mind you, but in perception.  So, if we were to be engaged in debate, for example, and characterised our opponents position as feudal, medieval, Islamic, or positively druidic, anyone who thought we were guilty of hostility or prejudice against druids could lay a complaint with the police, and we would risk prosecution.

The risibility of this nonsense was illustrated perfectly in the sordid case of Amber Rudd, UK Home Secretary.

A speech about foreign workers given by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, at the Tory party conference in October has been officially recorded as a hate incident, police have confirmed.  Rudd said in her speech that she wanted to make it harder for British companies to employ migrants and to ensure foreign workers “were not taking jobs British workers could do”.

Media coverage of the speech so alarmed an Oxford University physics professor, Joshua Silver, that he complained to the police. “I felt politicians have been using hate speech to turn Britons against foreigners, and I thought that is probably not lawful,” he told the Times.  His complaint was dealt with by West Midlands police as the Tory conference took place in Birmingham.

National police reporting rules introduced in 2014 and endorsed by Rudd herself require all complaints of hate crime incidents to be recorded “regardless of whether or not those making the complaint are the victim and irrespective of whether or not there is any evidence to identify the hate crime incident”.

West Midlands police have now written to the professor saying they have concluded an assessment of his complaint and they will not be investigating Rudd’s speech as a hate crime. “The matter has been recorded in line with the National Police Chiefs’ Council manual as a non-crime hate incident,” the force told the professor.  [The Guardian]

So, Amber was guilty of hate speech, albeit not sufficiently egregious to be prosecuted.  But it did alarm a nerdy physics professor from Oxford university who felt that hateful things might be being said against furriners.

The law, in this case, is now officially an ass.  And if that statement amounts to hate speech against donkeys, or if anyone perceives it to be such, lay all the complaints you want.  In fact, we encourage you to lay so many complaints that you collapse and die of exhaustion.  Stupid is, as stupid does.

It's time for Christians to engage in constructive resistance.  Any and every time you hear, read, see, or sense anyone doing or saying anything deleterious or negative towards the Christian faith, or God, or the Church, or the Lord Jesus Christ--including blasphemous speech, or cursing--whether it be in works of literature, movies, TV programmes, or an overheard conversation on a bus, lay a complaint with the police.  Note that the police cannot judge such complaints to be a vexatious wasting of police time, because the offence is all in the eye, or perception, or belief of the one offended--which would be you.  Since the law is an ass, let's kick the butt of the donkey, repeatedly.

And when police complain about "over zealous" Christians, lay complaints against them.  Lot's of them.  Each of them will require an investigation, and recording in the Register, whether they are prosecuted, or not.  It will be a fun time.  If we were smart, we could turn it into a national sport, hold conventions, run competitions, and have award ceremonies for the most prolific serial offended complainant.  That sort of stuff.