J.K. Rowling Still Free from the Speech Police

PG note: This is closer to the political line than PG typically ventures. This will not become a regular feature on The Passive Voice.

He makes this exception because, as described in The Wall Street Journal, Scottish law has the potential to seriously harm authors who are subject to it.

Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of any democracy. If a government can outlaw and punish speech it dislikes for any reason, a fundamental tool that allows a democracy to readjust its course and correct the errors that human beings inevitably commit.

It is a short step from prohibiting speech a government believes to be improper to prohibiting speech that criticizes other actions the small group of people who are in power decides will be best for themselves.

From The Wall Street Journal:

An appalling political effort to force the people of Scotland to express only government-approved thoughts on “gender” has so far been unable to conquer the country’s most successful expresser of thoughts. Megan Bonar and Katy Scott report for the BBC:

Social media comments made by JK Rowling challenging Scotland’s new hate crime law are not being treated as criminal, Police Scotland has said.

The Harry Potter author described several transgender women as men, including convicted prisoners, trans activists and other public figures.

The new law creates a new crime of “stirring up hatred” relating to protected characteristics.

The force said complaints had been received but no action would be taken.

Ms. Rowling responds on X:

I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women – irrespective of profile or financial means – will be treated equally under the law.

Libby Brooks adds in the U.K.’s Guardian:

As the Scottish government’s contentious hate crime law came into force on Monday, the author… posted a thread on X… listing sex offenders who had described themselves as transgender alongside well-known trans women activists, describing them as “men, every last one of them”.

She stated that “freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal”.

Agence France Presse notes more of Ms. Rowling’s commentary:

The law, she said in a lengthy online criticism, is “wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces”.

“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” she wrote.

Thank goodness that Ms. Rowling will remain free—at least for now—but will such liberty be allowed for everyone? Ross Douthat now writes at the New York Times

In 2002, the English journalist Ed West penned an essay entitled “Britain Isn’t a Free Country.” His evidence was straightforward: Through the aggressive enforcement of laws against hate speech, Britain was harassing, investigating and sometimes imprisoning its own citizens, effectively consigning the right to free expression to the dustbin of history.

Here in 2024, Mr. Douthat describes the latest assault on free expression:

The new Scottish law criminalizes public speech deemed “insulting” to a protected group (as opposed to the higher bar of “abusive”), and prosecutors need only prove that the speech was “likely” to encourage hatred rather than being explicitly intended to do so. One can offer a defense based on the speech in question being “reasonable,” and there is a nod to “the importance of the right to freedom of expression.” But a plain reading of the law seems like it could license prosecutions for a comedian’s monologue or for reading biblical passages on sexual morality in public.

Mr. Douthat adds:

My prediction is that neither Rowling nor any figure of her prominence will face prosecution. Rather, what you see in West’s examples is that the speech police prefer more obscure targets: the teenage girl prosecuted for posting rap lyrics that included the N-word or the local Tory official hauled in by the cops after posting to criticize the arrest of a Christian street preacher.

Which is, of course, a normal way for mild sorts of authoritarianism to work. Exceptions are made for prominent figures, lest the system look ridiculous, but ordinary people are taught not to cross the line.

Mindful of this possibility, Ms. Rowling posted on X on Tuesday:

If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I’ll repeat that woman’s words and they can charge us both at once.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal