British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has signaled his support for J.K. Rowling’s views opposing a new hate crime law in Scotland, saying people should not face criminal punishments “for stating simple facts on biology.”
The Harry Potter author published a controversial X thread on Monday, the day that Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act came into force, expressing opposition to the legislation. She also dared Scottish authorities to arrest her after saying that a list of people who identify as transgender women are “men, every last one of them.”
The law established a new crime of “stirring up hatred” about protected characteristics including age, religion, and transgender identity. It does not protect women as a group, though the Scottish government is expected to do so with a separate law relating to misogyny.
“People should not be [criminalized] for stating simple facts on biology,” Sunak told The Daily Telegraph Monday. “We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it.”
The BBC reported Tuesday that the right-wing leader was reluctant to comment on Rowling’s case specifically, saying it would not be “right for me to comment on police matters, individual matters.” “We should not be [criminalizing] people saying common sense things about biological sex, clearly that isn’t right,” Sunak said. “We have a proud tradition of free speech.”
Rowling has for years been a vocal and extremely divisive figure in British debates about the rights and protections that should be afforded to individuals on the basis of their gender identity.
On Monday, she accused Scottish lawmakers of seeming to place a “higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.” Rowling went on to claim that freedom of speech and belief “at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.”
She said she was currently out of the country but said she looks forward “to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment” if her X thread constituted an offense under the new legislation. Her post included the hashtag “#ArrestMe.”
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf said the law was about “protecting people against a rising tide of hatred” which had become “far too prevalent in our society nowadays.” The Scottish National Party politician added that people had “nothing to worry about” in relation to the new “stirring up hatred” charge unless “your behavior is threatening or abusive and intends to stir up hatred.”
Police Scotland has already received “several hundred” complaints under the new law, some of which were aimed at Rowling, according to The Scotsman, but it’s not clear if the writer will actually face arrest or prosecution. The maximum penalty under the new legislation is a seven-year prison sentence, the BBC reports.
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