The campaign by furious activists to destroy Edinburgh’s reputation as a great crucible of critical thinking continues apace. The home of the Enlightenment is under sustained attack. Students and – shame on them – staff at Edinburgh University have, for a second time, blocked the screening of the film Adult Human Female on campus. To allow the viewing and discussion of this documentary would, claim members of the mob, make the university an unsafe space.
Not to be outshone in this parade of idiocy, The Stand comedy club subsequently cowered before the screeching fury of gender ideology campaigners and cancelled a show due to take place during this year’s Edinburgh Festival featuring the SNP MP Joanna Cherry. Management at the venue – which is owned by Cherry’s fellow nationalist MP Tommy Sheppard – issued a statement declaring the ‘in conversation with…’ event would not go ahead after staff refused to cover it.
Where are the defenders of the legal rights of the gender critical right now?
Cherry, a middle-aged lesbian, is one of Scotland’s fancy new witches, a feminist who dares to suggest that the Scottish government’s plan to allow trans people to self-ID into their preferred legally-recognised sex might have implications for women’s single-sex spaces. For holding this perfectly reasonable and, in case it need be repeated, legally permissible view, Cherry and other feminists, such as the novelist JK Rowling and the campaigning journalist Julie Bindel are condemned as ‘transphobes’ whose views are driven not by the sort of concerns shared by the vast majority of the public but by hatred.
All of this unfolds as the Scottish government prepares a legal challenge against the Secretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack’s decision to use Section 35 of the Scotland Act to block reforms of the gender bill. The legislation was passed by MSPs last December before Jack blocked it on the grounds that the legislation would change the UK-wide Equality Act.
Where are the defenders of the legal rights of the gender critical right now? They are not to be found in the ranks of the Scottish government, which, when it comes to gender ideology, comprises a mix of the captured and the cowardly.
Asked about The Stand’s decision to cancel the Cherry event, Culture Secretary Angus Robertson MSP told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme that the possibility of legal action over the matter prevented him from speaking about it.
‘If you’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to land myself right in the middle of a live issue where some people are saying that they don’t want or are unable to go forward with an event. And there are others saying there’s a legal requirement for that to take place.’
What nonsense. If Robertson will not speak about this issue, then what is the point of him? It is hard to think of a matter on which it would be more appropriate for him to remark, in his capacity as culture secretary, than a venue censoriously cancelling a show during the world’s largest cultural festival. This, I’m afraid, sits very much in the ‘you had one job, Angus’ category.
In fact, every Scot, whether he or she cares about free speech or not, has an interest in this matter. The Stand’s parent company, Salt ’N’ Sauce Promotions, received a grant of £250,000 of taxpayers’ cash to sustain it during the Covid pandemic. Having financially supported the company, Scottish government ministers should feel entitled to advise it not to illegally cancel events on the grounds of participants’ protected beliefs. And a halfway decent culture secretary would have the guts to point out that censorship is the enemy of enlightenment.
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