The US vice-president, JD Vance, has caused quite a stir within the circles of the European and UK elites. His explosive speech in Munich might develop into one of the vital significant political speeches for a long time. He has been accused of the whole lot from being a fascist to a Trump stooge, but his speech deserves rather more careful consideration than easy name calling and partisan abuse.
I need to look at and fact check one claim he made within the speech concerning my native country, Scotland. This was the relevant a part of the speech:
“This last October, just just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to residents whose houses lay inside so-called protected access zones, warning them that even private prayer inside their very own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the federal government urged readers to report any fellow residents suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”
Is this true? The journalist Neil Mackay doesn’t think so. He wrote in The Herald newspaper. “Vance spewed a bunch of culture war lies about Scotland, claiming our abortion buffer zone laws banned folk from praying of their home. It’s not even value debunking intimately. We all understand it’s straight-up disinformation. We live on this country. We understand the reality.”
The National, the home newspaper of the Scottish government, was equally incandescent. It posted several articles and diverse tweets on X denouncing this ‘misinformation’.
But what’s the truth? I wrote on this issue for Christian Today here and the facts usually are not difficult. Exclusion zones have been arrange around Scottish abortion clinics looking for to ban not only protest, but any form of presence which might be interpreted as looking for to influence someone to not have an abortion.
A letter was sent to residents inside an Edinburgh exclusion area warning them that while the offences typically only applied in public places, “nevertheless activities in a personal place (akin to a house) inside the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a zone might be an offence in the event that they could be seen or heard inside the zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.” The letter warned that regulation breakers might be fined as much as £10,000. Religious preaching, prayer or silent vigils might be subject to prosecution in the event that they are done with “intent or recklessness”.
When the proposer of the Act, the Scottish Green MSP, Gillian Mackay, was interviewed by the BBC about Vance’s claims, she also pronounced that it was misinformation. She told the BBC that while letters were sent to houses inside the protected access areas, silent prayer was never mentioned. But she destroyed her own case by stating that “there are not any mentions of any specific behaviours even within the Act”. If her case is that since a particular behaviour isn’t mentioned it isn’t illegal, then her Act is useless. Standing outside an abortion clinic with a banner isn’t specifically mentioned, so in line with Ms Mackay, that may not be illegal?
Everyone knows that isn’t true. And it isn’t just protest. If you stood inside an exclusion zone and prayed privately, you can be arrested and charged – as was the person in England who Vance also mentioned, Adam Smith-Connor.
And because the letter sent to households states, the identical rules apply in a personal house inside the exclusion zone, as to other areas in that zone. Therefore, logically, if private prayer is forbidden within the exclusion zone, then it must even be forbidden in a personal house. Of course, if the curtains were closed and nobody else was present then nobody would know, and you wouldn’t be arrested. But if you happen to mentioned to someone, or wrote on social media that you just were praying for many who were having abortions, then you can be reported for breaking the law. The police have helpfully informed us that such actions could be reported to them.
Vance’s statements on Scotland were due to this fact substantively correct, regardless of the attempts of some politicians and journalists to misinform us.
It was also interesting that in the identical interview Gillian Mackay called the US government “a regime that desires to roll back on women’s rights and misrepresent others who’re looking for to advance women’s rights”. Ironic provided that this week a lady is being prosecuted for misgendering someone at her work within the NHS! The Scottish government cannot defend women’s rights when it cannot tell us what a lady is.
Vance was right to indicate that that is all a part of a general trend where free speech inside Europe is under threat. Right on cue, up steps the Scottish Greens leader, Patrick Harvie to demand that Jordan Peterson’s appearance on the Scottish Hydro be cancelled resulting from his controversial views. The National ran this as their headline story. Harvie, with out a trace of self-awareness, stated that Peterson needs to be banned because he promotes ‘toxic politics’. Another Glasgow Green mentioned climate change denial as something which must also be banned.
The Hydro controversially banned Franklin Graham and ended up having to pay damages to Graham after he sued. The irony is that stating that you’re thinking that Vance was right for saying that folks get cancelled in Scotland, could easily find yourself with you being cancelled.
This authoritarian cancel culture has turn out to be deeply ingrained in much of Scotland. I recall being asked by one university to send them a replica of my sermon to a gaggle of Christian students in order that it might be vetted – a request that was politely declined! On a unique occasion, a speaker at one other university was asked to elucidate why he had liked a social media post of mine. Someone else was asked by university officials to disown the views of their father. And I believe of the journalist who told me that she would like to fairly report my views but can be at risk of losing her job (or not getting promoted) if she did so. She needed to tow the party line.
My final example is relevant to this particular case. I used to be called in to satisfy with senior Scottish government officials to debate the Gender Recognition Act. Among other things, I asked that I might not be prosecuted for saying that a person couldn’t turn out to be a lady. They told me (over five years ago) that that could be very difficult, since it might be perceived as a hate crime.
The justifications for this type of behaviour are chillingly Orwellian. The Glasgow City Council leader, Susan Aitken, told the court within the Franklin Graham case, “My overriding concern, and I suppose the factor that ultimately was essentially the most decisive for me in taking the view that the event needs to be cancelled was because I believed that – not only the expression of the views, but additionally the knowledge of, or the expectation that the views might be expressed or might be expressed, which might have real life consequences for people in Glasgow.”
I might hope that any author, communicator, politician, teacher and particularly a preacher of God’s word would want their message to have real life consequences for the people we speak to. Ms Aitken represents that metro elite of the brand new religion – who think that they, and so they alone, have the suitable to find out what constitutes positive life consequences, and what constitutes ‘harm’. As a result, under the guise of ‘stopping harm’, they are going to exclude everyone they don’t agree with, within the name of inclusion. They will ban those that usually are not like them within the name of diversity. And they are going to not tolerate difference of opinion as regards their fundamental doctrines, all within the name of tolerance.
JD Vance spoke truth to power. The incontrovertible fact that power doesn’t prefer it doesn’t make it false. Would that other Christians have the courage to accomplish that – and stop bowing the knee to the Baals of up to date ideology.
David Robertson, a Scot in exile, Newcastle, New South Wales.
