Britain’s ever-expanding anti-hate-crimes regime

We know that strongly worded criticisms of homosexual practice can get people accused of hate crimes in the part of the world formerly known as Christendom. But here’s something new: a retired couple in Lancashire, England were questioned by police for 80 minutes because they had protested the official promotion of homosexuality by their local borough council, and had asked permission to post Christian literature alongside homosexual rights pamphlets. The police told the couple that what they had done (i.e., protesting to local officials, and asking permission to display Christian literature) verged on being a hate crime, and that they were “walking on eggshells.”

Remember the pacific, restrained English? Remember the gentlemanly British policemen of yore? Leftism has turned them into Orwellian thugs.

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After I posted the above, a reader reminded me of a recent Melanie Phillips article in which she reported a very similar or even worse incident, and, like me, called it “Orwellian.” In this instance, police questioned a woman for opposing homosexual adoptions as a guest on a broadcast discussion of the issue on the BBC:

When the new Civil Partnership Act came into force last week, family values campaigner Lynette Burrows took part in a discussion on BBC Radio Five Live about its implications.

During the programme, Ms Burrows said she did not believe that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt. Placing boys with two homosexuals for adoption, she said, was as obvious a risk as placing a girl with two heterosexual men who offered themselves as parents.

To her astonishment, the following day she was contacted by the police who said a ‘homophobic incident’ had been reported against her. She had committed no crime but, said the police, it was policy to investigate homophobic, racist and domestic incidents because these were ‘priority crimes’. Such action was ‘all about reassuring the community’.

Far from being thus reassured, it is difficult adequately to express one’s shock and abhorrence—not at Ms Burrows, but at the actions and attitudes of the police. What kind of a society has this become where, if someone expresses an opinion which falls foul of the politically approved doctrines of the day, the police start feeling their collar?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 24, 2005 01:02 PM | Send