The hate crime of preaching Christianity

Jan 26, 2021 by

by Peter Simpson, The Conservative Woman:

DECEMBER 24 last year was the closing date for the Government’s consultation process on the Law Commission’s proposals to amend hate-crime laws. Dr Joanna Williams, director of the Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood Project at the Civitas think tank, argues that the proposed amendments ‘would hand to the State frightening new powers to police speech’. 

A major problem with the proposals is the principle of regarding a crime as being more serious if the victim belongs to a group possessing ‘protected characteristics’. This attacks the whole concept of equality under the law. If the victims of crime are deemed not to possess a protected characteristic, the offence done to them will not be treated with the same level of seriousness as if they did. The plight of the grooming gang victims in Rotherham is surely a case in point.

The Law Commission’s proposals include, for example, expanding the protected characteristic of transgender to incorporate cross-dressers and those who identify as non-binary. If a Christian minister, endeavouring to give pastoral guidance to someone who favours a fluid approach to gender identity, asserts that there are only two genders, and that they are irrevocably fixed by God, will he then be deemed guilty of prejudice, bigotry and hatred?

This writer’s particular concern is the effect of changes to hate-crime laws on the freedom to proclaim the teachings of the Christian Scriptures. As an open-air preacher, I can vouch from personal experience that things are bad enough already without any further tightening of the law to feed the Establishment’s hunger to promote the values of cultural Marxism.

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