Justified declaration of war on prejudice … or wokery gone mad?

Justice secretary for Scotland, Angela Constance, is on record as saying that the 7,152 complaints received in the week following implementation of the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act on 1 April show why the act was “required and needed to protect marginalised and vulnerable communities most at risk of racial hatred and prejudice.”  Previously, Scotland first minister Humza Yousaf had said the Act was intended to promote zero tolerance to stirring up hatred.  Both of which comments are extremely interesting, because are we to infer, from these fervid declarations, that north of the border is a lawless waste land riddled with hatred?  A land indeed where minority groups fear to go, lest they be assaulted by the likes of
J K Rowling, with her gender-critical intransigence and antediluvian ideas of what it means to be a woman?
 
Certainly, the astonishingly high number of complaints, which have reportedly left the Scottish police reeling, would seem to indicate something badly amiss in the land of the brave.  Maybe they really do all ‘hate’ each other!  But, almost two weeks on, it transpires that a mere 3% of these complaints – most of which were made anonymously – have actually qualified as hate crimes, with the rest branded by the police as exploitation of the law to settle grievances.    
 
The new Act was hailed by Humza Yousaf as providing greater protection for vulnerable minorities, aka ‘victims’, and building safer communities.  Specifically, it  makes threatening or abusive behaviour, which is intended to stir up hatred based on prejudice towards characteristics including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and (for the first time) transgender identity, along with variations in sex characteristics, an imprisonable offence.   Which now makes ‘misgendering’ a person a crime, punishable by a maximum of 7 years imprisonment.  And yet, by a stunningly convoluted process of logic, Humza Yousaf still claims that the Act will protect freedom of speech.
 
One is tempted to ask what planet Scottish lawmakers live on, when they criminalise in this way the honest expression of biology, yet such is the insanity now dominating society that the coercive enforcement of ideology seemingly trumps all.
 
Cue, at this point, for Harry Potter author, J K Rowling, to take to social media and describe several transgender women, including some convicted self-identifying sex offenders, as ‘men’.   “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” she said bravely, challenging the police to arrest her.  Needless to say, they didn’t, and Rowling’s brave stand has served to expose the farcical nature of all such attempts to control what we are and aren’t allowed to say.  
 
The question remains, however – exactly when does an opinion, out of step with current fashion, trip over into hate?  Which begs the bigger question of how far we, as a society, are prepared to tolerate and allow the honestly held beliefs of those who simply disagree?
 
As it is, the authoritarian attempt to police and control what people may or may not say, in the process imposing an ideology that is diametrically opposed to traditional values, has more than a whiff of Stalinist Russia.  It is, in fact, yet further evidence of a covert but deadly attempt to remodel society … and we should be afraid, because at its heart lies nothing less than a desire, ultimately, to destroy Western civilisation.