Lamont’s amendment was defeated by 68 votes to 53.
The National: Freedom of expression amendments added to controversial Hate Crime Bill
Why? How can this be? It is already incredible that sex was omitted as a protected characteristic. Now we’re being asked to accept that it is to be deliberately excluded. Why? Why would anyone do that? It quite literally makes absolutely no sense whatever!
Setting aside, for the purposes of discussion, all the arguments about women being most likely to be the victims of abuse and negative discrimination, the choice to exclude sex is bewildering on grounds of logic alone. What the Hate Crime Bill is supposedly seeking to address is conflict between or among different categories of people. Let’s not try to deny that there are such categories. Or that some of them are perfectly ‘natural’. It tends to be the human-made categories and sub-categories and seemingly endless sub-divisions of humanity which are associated with conflict – even if a simplistic analyses associates the conflict only with the first and/or largest and therefore most obvious category.
Sex is a natural category. It is also associated with very significant levels of conflict – at least by a woefully shallow analysis. That is two overwhelming reasons for including sex as a category in legislation that purports to be about conflict between categories that reaches a level which may be considered criminal. So why is sex not a category? It is incomprehensible that it should not be.
Both Joan McAlpine and Johann Lamont present solid arguments. But I would like to correct the latter on one point. She says,
I want to include sex as an aggregator and to define sex in itself in terms of the Equality Act. These are simple proposals. They were supported by Lord Bracadale, who described the omission of sex as a lost opportunity. They are supported by many, many women and the men who stand with them.
I am a man. I want sex included as an aggregator not only to “stand by” women who want the same but because what we want is the same. If sex is excluded then this means men are excluded every bit as much as women. Let’s be clear that the consequences of being excluded are almost certainly much worse for women than for men. But if there is a principle involved – and there bloody well is! – then that principle is the same for both sexes.
I have come late to what is euphemistically called the ‘debate’ around GRA reform and the Hate Crime Bill. I regret that. I had my reasons. I now consider those reasons inadequate. But we are where we are. And where we are is not a good place. In fact, it is a distinctly unhealthy place. Had more men been prepared to speak out against their sex being denied as a valid and in itself unproblematic category of human being, we might have been in a better place.
This being so, the onus must surely be on men to rectify the situation. If it is our neglect which has given rise to the affront to reason and integrity that is being perpetrated then surely we men must contribute proportionally more to the effort to put things right. It is not too late. Laws can be repealed or amended. They are, like a preponderance of the categories which sort and rank humanity, human-made things. What we have made we can remake. So let’s do that.
I am angry. I am angry on behalf of women. But they have their own anger and little need of mine. I am angry on behalf of my own sex – a category to which I have belonged my entire life. A category that will not change as long as I live. A category I am content with. If my own government declines to recognise this category then it is only to be expected that I should be angry.
Peter A Bell 
Well, I am mad as hell (copyright Peter Finch, Network 1976):
I am mad at the SNP leadership for pursuing extreme, and extremely unpopular, policies that pander to the crazed ideas of a minute minority of zealots.
I am mad at the SNP leadership for its undermining of its own party democracy.
I am mad at the SNP leadership for permitting demotion and demonisation of dissenters.
I am mad at the SNP leadership for attempting to inflict authoritarian laws on the very people that they are obliged, and claim they are trying, to serve.
They seem to be misinterpreting Alasdair Gray’s recommendation to “work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”.
The independent country that this bunch of would be totalitarian despots currently in control of the SNP aspire to create would seem to be a brave new world stuck somewhere in time around nineteen hundred and eighty-four.
Double dystopia.
But mostly I mad at the SNP leadership for avoiding, and suppressing, discussion on the means of achieving Scotland’s political and economic Independence.
And I’m not going this take this anymore! (copyright Peter Finch, Network 1976)
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duncanio, it is not difficult to understand how you might feel mad around these events, there are many I am sure who hold a similar view.
The hierarchy currently in control of the SNP are there by consent of the membership of that organisation. The majority of that membership I believe have been content to be misguided by the popularity surrounding Nicola Sturgeon, the novelty act on a politically bare stage.
Responsibility for this hellish state of affairs rests squarely on the shoulders of the politically inactive branches which have existed only as flag wavers on Bannockburn Day and formed part of the Nicola Sturgeon appreciation society on the conference jamboree trail.
The Independence movement in Scotland has since 2015 been served ONLY by the YES campaigners through the auspices of AUOB. For the most part at those major events there have only been token appearances by senior SNP politicians and NONE of any consequence by Nicola Sturgeon who is in possession of several mandates to prosecute the case for Scottish Independence on behalf of its people.
Nicola Sturgeon has demonstrated timeously by her appearance at Gay Pride marches and events in England, not in any way connected with furthering the cause of Scottish Independence, that she holds our requested mandates in contempt. Again I will labour the point, it is the membership who must bear responsibility, they and they alone have created the conditions within the party structures for this situation to prevail. The members must regain authority and do so with impunity now.
It is rumored Nicola Sturgeon may be seeking a post within the UN based in Geneva, perhaps her covert attraction to the French (language) may yet provide the impetus by which we will be rid of her and her science denying creed. Scotland’s future will not be determined by a cult alien to the norms of common decency.
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Peter, it seems that my lengthy comment contained a link that the software does not like. My apologies.
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The question is. What is driving these insane policies?
Surely there must be some kind of malevolent force doing this. Because surely they know how damaging and unpopular it is.
It’s like it is planned and coordinated to do damage.
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“It’s like it is planned and coordinated to do damage.”
-Damage: like not achieving a majority that would naturally lead to a Referendum.
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It seems to have been forgotten that this is the year of the census , will the newly authorised self-identifiers get to declare something which would put them in breach of UK law?
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People around the globe are being pushed and bullied by a few zealots through social media to accept a world view that gender is inconsequential. You want Scotland to gain its independence but cannot change this hate crime bill is very telling in that your political leadership has lost their way. Winning and staying in office has become more important. The globalist view is as pernicious as the Wuhan coronavirus and in my opinion more destructive. Nationalism has to be denied whether it is done by bribery, blackmail or something more sinister. My own country, the United States has turned into a nation that I do not recognize. I wish you luck in your aspirations for Scotland.
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I echo your sentiments Duncanio. What I don’t understand is why the SNP old guard are not publicly voicing their absolute fury at what is going on. If they don’t act before the election there will be no SNP left only a trans political party. I have never known Scotlands political future to look so bad.
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Yes I do not gt it either.
I have written to Stewart Stephenson, National Secretary, twice stating my concerns regarding the NEC gerrymandering of the List Selection ‘process’ and have yet to receive a response other than an auto-acknowledgement of my emails.
SS, as you are no doubt aware, is standing down at from the Scottish Parliament, but having been elected to the NEC only in November last year I presume he’ll be staying on there. (Similarly Mike Russell, in the position as President). He’s very experienced politician, has been a minister on a couple of occasions in the Scottish Government under Alex Salmond and is a very long standing member of the SNP having joined in 1961.
I would have considered him ‘old school’ given his background. So I don’t understand it although I believe others have had the same experience.
Have they all been frightened into silence by der leader on pain of something or other?
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Your hypocrisy hasn’t gone unnoticed Peter , now months later you suddenly realise that the GRA and HCB are important , whilst many of us have been explaining and highlighting the dangers and problems the SNP are deliberately introducing to the independence movement
But on the day that this reviled policy is due to be voted on, Peter has a revelation ,whilst for months he has denigrated and dismissed anyone who dared raise the subject , when I posted that the SNP were blackmailing independence supporters by refusing to delay this legislation until after independence you were quick to respond that nobody forces you to vote for them it is your choice , so Peter are you having to ignore your integrity and vote for the lunatics to continue running the asylum. CHOICES EH WHO’D HAVE THEM
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Did you even read the article? It contains an apology for not getting involved in the subject earlier.
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Gavin I think you have a comprehension problem nowhere in Peter’s article does it say he apologises for anything, it does say he regrets but that is NOT apologising
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I have nothing to apologise for.
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I read regret as a form of apology. Regret is the desire things had happened differently, twinned with personal agency. As such to feel regret is an apology to yourself, if not necessarily to anyone else.
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