Today another of your liberties has been composted in the name of political correctness, for today Section 74 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 comes into force. This makes incitement of hatred on grounds of sexual orientation a criminal offence.

I don’t think that people deserve to be treated badly because of their professed or perceived sexuality, because physical/verbal bullying is a horrible thing and nobody should have to be the victim of the emotional torture associated with anti-homosexualist abuse.

Having said this, I am reasonably sure (and do forgive my optimism) that if someone were being seriously victimised because of certain character traits, he could file a complaint with the official police who, I’m sure, would be able throw the book the culprit for assault or affray or intimidation. There are already laws in place protecting innocent people persecution at the hands of ruffians and bigots and the like  (I do acknowledge –on occasion from firsthand experience – that the police sometimes fail to defend the meek, but that’s not really the point of this entry).

This latest amendment to the law, however, issuing an interdiction forbidding incitement of hatred“against a group of persons defined by reference to sexual orientation” is a different matter entirely. I’m sure that there are members of the government who genuinely (and ill-advisedly) believe that passing a myriad of acts of Parliament against discrimination is an effective and reasonable way to protect the innocent. I’d like to believe that the legislators in the Labour party who came up with this had nothing but the best of intentions, however misguided. Needless to say, I rather struggle with this article of faith.

First of all, I’m not entirely sure how one incites hatred against a group of people. One might try and convince others that a certain practice is inherently disordered and that all persons should refrain from this practice. One might try and label that practice as perverted or disgusting or a vile abomination. Obviously some might object to these terms – still, that’s really a matter of opinion. Saying unpleasant things isn’t a particularly awful thing to do. That is, provided it isn’t a specific attack directed at an individual person with the intention of harming them. There is a world of difference, a big thick marker of distinction between making a criticism of a practice and personally harassing those that enjoy that practice.

As an aside, it’s a tolerated maxim that racist jokes are unacceptable in public, but between individuals they might raise a few chuckles. I don’t think that jokes based on the colour of a person’s skin are all that hilarious per se, rather, because they’re forbidden and cheeky, they create humour simply as a result of their illicit nature. Prepare yourself, therefore, for a deluge of off-colour remarks about the male genital tract. I might be wrong, but over time I suspect that the risk of being incited to hatred will turn those frowns upside down. Putting homosexuals on some sort of pedestal, protected from criticism, probably isn’t a good thing – time will ultimately tell whether or not there’ll be some unexpected consequence of doing this.

The minutiae aside, this law has rather disturbing ramifications on the old free speech thing. First of all, the Government has now reduced the number of possible combinations of words that one can say without fear of prosecution. There’s a good chance that this will result in various comedians having to reshuffle their repertoires – (Rowan Atkinson, for example, notably spoke out against laws that tried to immunise religious groups from ridicule) – this might mean that the output on the BBC is even less amusing than usual. It might mean that Stephen Green of Christian Voice gets another visit from the police. These, however, are minor side-effects of the legislation.

What i find particularly awful about laws of this nature is that it promotes and propagates a culture of censorship, of policeman reading through websites looking for questionable comments. The law doesn’t just apply to fringe politicians;  it covers “publishing or distribution of written material, but also the public performance of a play, distributing, showing or playing a recording, broadcasting a programme and the possession of inflammatory material”.

Even worse, when a government takes this sort of attitude, it prompts a fear of the state. It prompts a negative, worried society of self-censorship, where people have to consciously modify what they say out of fear of being arrested. We were once proud of the fact that even though we feared communism, we allowed Communist Party candidates to run for election. We were once a bastion of civil liberties and the freedom of expression. Now we’re descending into a horrible dystopia where people are going to become worried that a seemingly innocuous comment will result in them being hauled before a judge and sent for compulsory rehabilitation.

Edit: Grahame Archer on ”CentrerRight” also covers this.

Edit again: Susan Wilkinson runs a Swiss Bed and Breakfast in Berkshire. She quite recently turned away two men who wished to sleep in the same bed (at the same time) because it is “against her convictions”. Given that she’d already accepted the booking, and that the blurb states that “warm & friendly welcome awaits all guests”, I think that this was rude. I do think that she should have the liberty to refuse to house whomsoever she pleases – however, she should probably have made this more obvious.

However, the new law goes a step further in criminalising those who dare to vocalise their convictions. Should copies of the Catechism of the Catholic Church be judged “inflammatory” and banned from publication because of #2357? Should Mrs Wilkinson should be reported to the police because she doesn’t want intrinsically disorderd activities going on in her guest house?