HATE CRIME THE RAINBOW PROJECT

In 2021, the Scottish Parliament passed the Hate Crime and Sentencing Act, which made a number of significant updates to their existing framework for tackling hate crime. Now, three years later and following extensive work to ensure it was able to be fully implemented and enforced, the Act has come into effect on the 1st of April. The Act made two main changes to the legislative framework: it added new protected characteristics to the existing list, namely age and differences in sex characteristics (intersex), while also introducing a new offence of “stirring up hatred” against these characteristics or any of the existing ones, which includes sexual orientation, transgender identity, race, religion, and disability.

Naturally, no progression of protections or rights for marginalised communities in any region of the UK can come into force without profound and vicious backlash, fuelled by dis- and mis-information. A certain famous author and outspoken advocate against trans communities stepped into the fray, putting out a series of quite offensive and upsetting (but clearly not illegal) tweets about trans people alongside a challenge to Police Scotland to arrest her for this speech. This challenge prompted a dizzying number of frenzied articles from across the UK media demonstrating little to no willingness to actually engage with the legislation as it is being enacted, but rather obsessing over a series of “what ifs” which are not reflective of the changes the law actually made. “What if” this hate crime bill will destroy freedom of speech? “What if” we can’t say anything offensive or subversive anymore? “What if” I get arrested for misgendering a trans person?

Of course, as you can likely tell from my tone, these hypothetical questions being posed are nothing but a distraction and a conceited attempt to undermine and frustrate what is, in reality, a positive development for LGBTQIA+ and other marginalised communities in Scotland. Hate crime perpetrated against gay and bisexual people have been steadily increasing since records began in 2010, and hate crimes perpetrated against transgender people spiked in 2021-22, possibly in response to increasing anti-trans rhetoric in the media and political discourse. Disability hate crime has similarly been steadily rising since it was included in the 2010 law change, with those with learning disabilities being the disproportionate victims of this rise.

Hate crime and hate speech perpetrated on social media has reached a fever pitch, with a small number of extremely vocal individuals and groups engaging in incessant targeted attempts to incite and stir up hatred against marginalised groups, particularly trans people and migrants. Reform was necessary to bring the law up-to-date with this increasingly fervent and prevalent hate, to be fit for a digital age, and to include age-based hate and intersex people in the existing statutory aggravator to ensure that those hate crimes could also be captured by the law.

The above “what ifs” do raise an important question, though, around the cohesion of this new legislation with existing protections for and understanding of the right to freedom of expression – a question which was asked and answered in 2021, during the initial passage of the Bill. The Bill, now Act, was amended to include specific protections for freedom of expression, above and beyond existing protections in Scotland. Beside this, the Scottish Parliament – much like the Northern Ireland Assembly – is bound to act compatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10 of which explicitly protects the right to freedom of expression and to “shock, disturb or offend the deeply-held beliefs of others”. This new Hate Crime Act could never – and was never intended to – breach or alter that commitment to free expression and speech. What it does do, however, is ensure that where speech meets the threshold of what a reasonable person would consider “threatening or abusive” behaviour, and where the perpetrator has the intent to stir up hatred against a particular individual or group, the law and criminal justice system is equipped to respond to this. Freedom of expression does not give everyone the freedom to threaten or abuse someone on the basis of their identity, their race, their disability, or any other characteristic. Indeed, England has had similar protections for stirring up hate on the grounds of sexual orientation for over a decade and against stirring up racial hatred since the 1980s.

The fact that this change to the law has caused so much consternation and furore speaks more to the rising tide of hate being stirred up against particular marginalised groups in our society than it does to concerns about the actual legislation itself. Police Scotland reported that they had received over 4000 hate speech reports in the two days following the laws enactment – a significant number of which, it turns out, were vexatious claims made against Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, in a transparent attempt to frustrate the new law. Such a coordinated effort to scupper the implementation of the Hate Crime Act should not be taken as a sign that it is unworkable, but that it is more necessary than ever.

So what about Northern Ireland?

Our hate crime legislation here in Northern Ireland lags far behind even the previous Scottish law. We operate on an ‘enhanced sentencing’ model, wherein the hate motivation for a crime is only applied (if at all) at the sentencing stage, rather than being considered throughout the judicial process.

The statutory aggravation model operational across Scotland, England and Wales for over a decade ensures that the hate motivation is considered at every step, from the charge levelled at a perpetrator right through to the judgement and sentencing, helping to ensure victims of hate crime know that this hate motivation and the disproportionate impact it has on them is being truly taken into account by the judicial system.

Not only is our entire framework for prosecuting hate crime outdated, but the law also doesn’t include transphobic hate crime – something which has been steadily on the rise over the past number of years, both within official recorded hate crime and in reporting within community services such as The Rainbow Project’s Hate Crime Advocacy Service. According to the PSNI’s official statistics, recorded transphobic hate incidents have risen sharply since 2018, and reached a peak last year, causing untold harm to our communities and individual victims.

A judge-led Independent Review of hate crime legislation, published in December 2020, generated a series of recommendations, which included moving to the aforementioned enhanced sentencing model, incorporating transgender identity and differences in sex characteristics as protected categories within any new law, and ensuring that the multiple identities and characteristics of victims can be accounted for in reporting and prosecution. Following this review, the Justice Minister Naomi Long committed to bringing forward many of the recommendations, stating that transphobic hate crime would be covered by any new Hate Crime Bill brought before the Assembly.

Of course, this all occurred before the Assembly and Executive were brought crashing down in 2022, grinding to a halt most work on hate crime and other areas of interest such as banning conversion practices and reforming gender affirming healthcare. The two-year delay has resulted in a much reduced Assembly mandate in which to push for positive change and progress the rights of LGBTQIA+ communities in Northern Ireland, who have suffered from inadequate protections and failing services for far too long.

It is high time that the Justice Minister, and the wider Executive, rapidly worked to enact a new Hate Crime Bill, and avoid any further unnecessary delays which can only serve to embolden opponents and provide opportunities for the public discourse around these reasonable reforms to descend further and further into disinformation-fuelled chaos.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE Xand

How many times have you heard someone tell you to “Look on the bright side!” when you are filled with anxiety and feeling lower than a snake’s arsehole? This dear reader, is called “Bright- siding”, and it is as ubiquitous in Ireland as the fucking shamrock. I only recently came across this term when watching a splendid queer film called ‘Breaking Fast’ with the gorgeous Haaz Sleiman and the rather yummy and ever so fuckable Michael Cassidy. Incidentally, after 17 long dickless, joyless, sexless months of celibacy, I’d love to be the extra filling in that man sandwich! But I can’t really complain about the self-imposed lack of dinkle as I’m keeping meself nice for a Bradley Cooper look-a-like innit. What? If ya don’t ask, ya don’t fuckin’ get!

Anywho, I had to go to my friend Google to research the term ‘bright-siding’ and it didn’t take me long to realise that it’s a slightly less toxic version of ‘gas-lighting’. In other words, it’s the subtle invalidation of a person’s feelings, experiences, and opinions and an attempt to trivialise genuine feelings of anxiety or trauma by telling them to ‘look on the bright side!’. Yeah. We’ve all experienced it and it doesn’t feel good. It’s narcissism shoved in a crappy little box and wrapped up in a shitty bow with a gift tag that reads ‘Fuck You!’, and this little pressie is often offered to us by ‘well-meaning’ family, friends, and loved ones in times of sadness, heartache and depression and it’s about as useful as a steering wheel on a canoe.

The problem with not being listened to, especially for a queer person in 2024, is that we are made to feel disempowered and less important. Our feelings don’t matter and the more we’re made to feel this way, the more we retreat into ourselves, which can be a very dark place indeed. You only have to look at the statistics in a 2023 report on mental health in Northern Ireland (mentalhealthchampion-ni. org.uk) to notice when asked, “Half of males (49%) and 40% of females reported having difficulty talking to other people about their own feelings and emotions.” More worrying is the fact that “There has been a 28% rise in self-harm and suicidal ideation presentations together, since 2012/13”.

When it comes to the LGBTQIA community in Northern Ireland the report said the following:

“Evidence suggests that people who identify as LGBTQIA+ are at a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health. Research carried out by the Rainbow Project in 2021,87 showed that a third (33%) of the LGBTQIA+ community in Northern Ireland has experienced poor mental health, 65% of those responses said that they have experienced depression, and 45% have experienced suicidal idealisation. The Northern Ireland Census includes data on self-reported emotional or mental health conditions. The 2021 data shows that 26.55% of those who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or other sexual orientation indicated they had an emotional or mental health problem expected to last 12 months or more.”

The simple fact of the matter is that Queer people in Northern Ireland often have to cope with some level of discrimination, prejudice, or abuse (physical or verbal) on a regular basis. Hell, I’m almost fifty fucking years old and just last week a deeply stoned guy in his early twenties called me a “Queer Bastard” in the street in broad daylight. At the time I laughed it off as this guy is a local drug dealer who is on the road to disaster and frankly, I felt pity for him. Feeling pity for someone like that, even if they’re a homophobic cunt, feels more empowering to me because once I get angry I lose my power. Power is in staying calm and remembering that God created homosexuals so the truly gifted needn’t be burdened with children (apart from you Daniel of course!). Our lovely editor has been chasing his tail innit folks! I know what it’s like being a dad, but my twins are small and covered in fur and I’ll never have to pay off their student loans. Thank Fuck!

If people are reporting having difficulty talking about their feelings due to the stigma surrounding mental health, I propose this is because they’re being told to cheer up and look on the bright side instead of being heard. Pushing one’s feelings down and not talking is a bit like pushing an empty coke bottle to the bottom of a swimming pool. Guess what’s gonna happen? Yeah, sooner or later it’s going to shoot up and hit you in the fuckin’ face.

One of the most powerful books I have ever read was by an amazing woman called Louise Hay called ‘You Can Heal Your Life’, who, along with many others, believes that negative feelings, thoughts, and emotions manifest physical health problems, diseases, and even cancer. Stress, anxiety, unhappiness, loneliness, fear, trauma, sadness, and depression can have a direct effect on a person’s physical health. I lost my sister to cancer two years ago. She was stressed and anxious her entire life.

I asked Google the question, “How common is cancer?” - “Cancer is a common condition and a serious health problem. Excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, there are around 9,000 new cases diagnosed each year in Northern Ireland. It is estimated that one in two people will develop cancer at some point in their lives.” Northern Ireland is a tiny place with a population of only 1,903,175 according to the census of March 2021. That’s pretty high for such a small place! According to drugsandalcholni.info there were 350 alcohol-specific deaths in 2021 -the second highest on record with the previous year. 53% higher than 10 years ago. When you Google rates of binge drinking, “The global status report on alcohol and health found that 39 per cent of all Irish people aged 15 and over had engaged in binge drinking, or “heavy episode drinking” in the last month. The figures put Ireland ahead of Britain’s 28 per cent and just behind Austria’s 40.5 per cent, out of 194 countries.”

I wonder how many of these problems are down to people feeling invalidated and unheard. How different would these statistics be if instead of being told to ‘look on the bright side’, people were treated with respect and if the conversation went more like this, ‘I’m sorry to hear you are feeling lower than a snake’s arsehole today, let’s have a coffee and we can talk about it? I’m listening...’. Well, I feel like Dr Frasier Fucking Crane this morning god dammit! Having done my good deed for today I’m gonna fuck off and have a coffee! Laters!