UK: Victory in the war on woke: Judges' landmark ruling in case of mother who called trans woman 'he' on Twitter means freedom of speech DOES includes the 'right to offend'
Judges have insisted that freedom of speech includes the 'right to offend' in a landmark ruling which could help to turn the tide on 'woke' intolerance after a feminist who called a transgender woman a 'pig in a wig' and a 'man' was cleared.
Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby said: 'Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.'
They added that 'free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another'. The judgment from two senior members of the judiciary will set a precedent for future cases involving freedom of speech.
The ruling has emerged only now, but came in the successful appeal decided last week in favour of mother-of-two Kate Scottow, from Hitchin in Hertfordshire, after she had been found guilty under the 2003 Communications Act earlier in the year.
Miss Scottow told The Daily Telegraph: 'It was necessary to enshrine one of the most fundamental rights of every living being in a democratic society – the right to freedom of speech that is now routinely attacked...' But Miss Hayden said: 'This is... a kick in the teeth to the entire LGBT community.'
Miss Scottow was arrested in 2018 and taken from her children and into custody after referring to trans woman Stefanie Hayden as a man, a 'racist' and a 'pig in the wig'. Miss Hayden, 47, reported the online remarks to police.
She had been arrested by three police officers in 2019 at her home in Pirton near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in front of her daughter, 10, and son, 20 months. Boris Johnson later called it an abuse of power.
In February this year radical feminist Miss Scottow, 40, was handed a two-year conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £1,000 compensation, with district judge Margaret Dodds telling her: 'Your comments contributed nothing to a debate. We teach children to be kind to each other and not to call each other names in the playground.'
But, overturning the decision, Mr Justice Warby explained that the relevant parts of the Communications Act 'were not intended by Parliament to criminalise forms of expression, the content of which is no worse than annoying or inconvenient in nature'.
Mr Justice Warby also suggested that the prosecution had been an 'unjustified state interference with free speech'.
Lord Justice Bean said the appeal illustrated the need for decision-makers in the criminal justice system to have regard to issues of freedom of speech.
The two appeal judges, who outlined their reasoning in a written ruling published on Wednesday, said prosecutors had not obtained 'all the contextual material for the offending messages', and had presented the case in a 'somewhat disorderly way' at the trial.
Boris Johnson said at the time that sending three officers to deal with the case and holding Ms Scottow for seven hours was an 'abuse of manpower' at a time when violent crime is increasing
Female prisoner who was sexually assaulted bidding to ban trans inmates from women's jails
A female prisoner who was sexually assaulted by a trans inmate has launched a challenge against the policy of keeping such offenders in women's prisons, it emerged last month.
She was attacked by an inmate who identified as female but had not had reassignment surgery.
The trans woman had convictions for serious sexual offences. Yet the offender was still put in a women's jail, Downview in Surrey.
A judicial review will seek to overturn government policy which allows men who have been awarded a gender recognition certificate from being housed in female prisons.
The landmark case will argue the Government is breaching equality law. It will focus on trans women inmates who have committed sexual or violent crime.
Activist Miss Hayden, who began medically transitioning in 2007 and was given a gender recognition certificate in 2018, won a landmark case at the High Court in April last year when website Mumsnet was forced to reveal the identity of an anonymous user who had been accused of bullying her online.
In February Ms Scottow, 39, was found guilty of persistently making use of a public communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience, and anxiety to Stephanie Hayden, 48, between September 2018 and last May.
The 'radical feminist' was accused of deliberately 'misgendering' Ms Hayden by referring to her as 'he' or 'him' during a period of 'significant online abuse'.
Throughout the trial her supporters gathered outside St Albans Magistrates' Court to protest the verdict, chanting 'pig in a wig' and 'he's a man - go on prosecute me'.
Holding banners which read 'we love free speech', the mob tied scarves in the Suffragettes' purple, green, and white to lampposts outside the courthouse.
But Ms Hayden argued the defendant was guilty of 'harassment' and had 'misgendered' her 'to annoy people like me', adding: 'It's calculated to violate my dignity as a woman.'
Trumpeting her Gender Recognition Certificate, the complainant told the court how Ms Scottow was bound by law to refer to her as a woman. Ms Scottow was handed a two-year conditional discharge, and was ordered by the court to pay £1,000 compensation within six months.
But now after a successful appeal the prosecution has been quashed.
In a separate incident Father Ted creator Graham Linehan was given a verbal harassment warning by West Yorkshire Police after Miss Hayden reported him for referring to her by previous names and pronouns on Twitter in 2018.
Police faced a backlash for phoning a 74-year-old woman to warn her that her online posts about gender identity had offended transgender people.
Former local journalist Margaret Nelson wrote in her blog that if a transgender person's body was dissected post-mortem, 'his or her sex would be obvious to a student or pathologist'.
But she was later contacted by Suffolk Police, who woke her with a morning phone call, telling her the comments had provoked complaints from members of the trans community.
A Necessary Defense of Girls' Sports
How surreal it must’ve been for Selina Soule and the other girls to watch it disappear like it did. Everything they’d worked so hard for in track and field had just evaporated.
Soule had run a great race, missing her personal best in the 55-meter dash by a mere hundredth of a second. And yet she was denied a spot in the Connecticut high school state finals by two “transgender” runners who smoked the rest of the field.
“It’s just really frustrating and heartbreaking,” she said last year, “because we all train extremely hard to shave off just fractions of a second off of our time. And these athletes can do half the amount of work that we do, and it doesn’t matter. We have no chance of winning.”
Soule, who’s been smeared by the always-classy Left as “transphobic” and a “sore loser,” was speaking about her state’s anti-science policy of allowing high school student athletes to compete based solely on their expressed gender identity. This policy is at odds with both the International Olympic Committee and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which require “transgender” athletes to take testosterone-suppressing drugs to compete in the women’s category. It’s a policy that cost Soule and a number of other girls the satisfaction and the college scholarships that typically accompany championship-level performances in track and field. (To get a sense of the ridiculousness of expressed gender identity, check out Oxford-educated British rapper Zuby, who one day expressed himself as a female long enough to smash the British women’s deadlift record.)
Of course, as our Arnold Ahlert pointed out back in February of 2019, the Left insists there’s no difference whatsoever between boys and girls, men and women.
Connecticut is one of 18 states that allow this abomination — this pitting of biological boys against competitors who are, on average, 9% shorter; whose bones are smaller and weaker both in terms of size and density; whose heads are smaller; whose elbows, shoulders, fingers, and pelvises are physically different; whose torsos are longer and whose arms and legs are shorter; and, critically, whose bodies have a significantly smaller proportion of muscle mass. But hey, that’s just the science talking.
Soule, along with two fellow athletes, Alanna Smith and Chelsea Mitchell, finally had enough, and in February the Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit on their behalf. Their argument is that allowing boys to compete in the female category denies girls “opportunities for participation, recruitment, and scholarships,” and is thus at odds with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its Title IX prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex.
Congress has been curiously silent about this issue. Perhaps our elected representatives are afraid to run afoul of the Rainbow Mafia or be disinvited from all the best cocktail parties. But outgoing Hawaii Representative and former Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard isn’t afraid. Nor is Oklahoma Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin, himself a former professional MMA fighter. Last week, they introduced a bill called the Protect Women’s Sports Act to secure the sanctity and fundamental decency of women’s sports by clarifying that Title IX rules apply to female athletes based on their biological sex rather than their preferred “gender identity.”
“Title IX,” says Mullin, “was designed to give women and girls an equal chance to succeed, including in sports. Allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports diminishes that equality and takes away from the original intent of Title IX.”
The bill is a nice parting shot from Gabbard, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve and a libertarian-leaning progressive who’s been a steady thorn in the side of the Democrat establishment, as this paint-peeling 2019 Twitter takedown of Hillary Clinton will attest. She’s represented Hawaii’s second congressional district since 2012 and ran for president this year, but she didn’t seek reelection to the House. Not surprisingly, she’s taken plenty of incoming fire from the Left for her bill, but she spent the weekend hitting back via Twitter and educating via an explanatory video.
“My ‘Protect Women’s Sports Act’ is based on science. It safeguards equality & ensures a level playing field for girls & women competing in sports. It upholds Title IX’s original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men & women athletes based on sex.”
This is all well and good, of course, but unless this bill gets to the House floor for a vote, it’s little more than posturing. And, come to think of it, what are the odds that Nancy Pelosi and her hard-left caucus will actually acknowledge the science and stand up for our daughters?
https://patriotpost.us/articles/76465-a-necessary-defense-of-girls-sports-2020-12-15
Queen's Zulu painting is given 'colonial' warning: Image depicting the Battle of Rorke's Drift has description updated to acknowledge its links to imperialismA royal painting of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift has had its description updated to acknowledge its links to imperialism.
It is among 62 works in the Royal Collection to be amended in the wake of the Black Lives Matter campaign.
Part of the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, Rorke’s Drift saw 141 British soldiers defend a field hospital against an attack from 4,000 warriors.
Eleven Victoria Crosses were won in the battle which was depicted in Zulu, a 1964 film starring Michael Caine.
The online description of the oil painting, by Elizabeth Thompson under commission from Queen Victoria, now notes: ‘This work is connected to colonialism and imperialism.
'Like all Royal Collection records, this work is subject to ongoing research as the Royal Collection Trust seeks to present fully the narratives represented in the collection.’
A bust of the philosopher John Locke in Kensington Palace has had its description updated to acknowledge his links to slavery.
He was an investor in the Royal African Company, which controlled the British slave trade.
The royal trust’s online description of the marble bust of Locke now notes he was ‘connected with the transatlantic slave trade and supported it politically’.
The description of a Windsor Castle bust of the Duke of Marlborough is another to have been updated.
It now says: ‘The Duke of Marlborough was connected with the transatlantic slave trade and benefited from it financially.’
The duke won a crucial military victory over France in 1704.
The royal trust began reviewing hundreds of thousands of artworks in the Queen’s collection for colonial and slave links this summer. None have been removed.
A painting of Sir Thomas Picton, known as the Hero of Waterloo, was the first to have been updated in July, adding reference to his links to slavery.
As well as for links to slavery and colonialism, the Trust has also been reviewing items which feature BAME sitters.
Some of these have had their description updated with the words: 'Royal Collection Trust welcomes further information relating to the identity of those depicted and the creation or provenance of this object.'
Yesterday a Royal Collection Trust spokesman said: 'We have an ongoing programme of activities to research, display, loan and publish detailed records of objects in the Royal Collection, in order for a wide range of audiences to learn about the collection and its history.
'Displays and publicly available object records are continually under review.'
Supreme Court Strikes Down Restrictions on Colorado Churches
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court granted a temporary injunction to a Colorado church that was fighting Governor Jared Polis’s restrictions on capacity.
The court pointed to a decision in New York where the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn sued Governor Andrew Cuomo over his pandemic restrictions and won on the grounds that Cuomo’s orders violated the First Amendment.
This would appear to open the door to churches nationwide to decide their own COVID policies.
Washington Examiner:
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, along with Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, pointing to the fact that Colorado had preemptively lifted its church limitations once the High Plains Harvest appealed to the high court.
“The state has explained that it took that action in response to this court’s recent decision in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo,” Kagan wrote. “Absent our issuing different guidance, there is no reason to think Colorado will reverse course — and so no reason to think Harvest Church will again face capacity limits.”
Given that governors are slapping restrictions as severe as they were in the spring on their citizens, Kagan and the liberals are taking a lot on faith.
The arrival of Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the court has proven to be a godsend to religious liberty.
CNN:
The cases highlight the impact of Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the bench. Before her arrival, Chief Justice John Roberts had sided with the liberals, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, against houses of worship in similar disputes. Since Barrett’s arrival, however, and the establishment of a strong 6-3 conservative majority, the court now has reversed course and has the necessary votes to side with religious groups.
Another important religious liberty case in New Jersey was also decided in favor of houses of worship. The New Jersey suit concerned not only limiting capacity but also the mask mandate that required mask-wearing in church except for receiving communion.
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal defended the state’s restrictions telling the justices that the state as “accommodated religious conduct — ensuring religious activities receive at least as much protection as secular conduct, if not more.”
New Jersey requires that religious gatherings fill no more than 25% of the room.
The Supreme Court issued the order with no dissent.
What’s truly disturbing is that political authorities thought nothing of violating the religious beliefs and liberty of the people in the name of “public health.” That the Supreme Court was forced into upholding our most fundamental rights against this assault says a lot about the state of freedom in the United States today and why vigilance, especially over the next four years, will be so important.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
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http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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