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Comment by JamisonM | Hacker News Reader

This headline is a ridiculous caricature of the content of the bill as I understand it.

The bill as I understand it is largely about adding a modifier to a sentence for an actual crime committed that might be motivated by hate. So the folks quoting 1984 need to maybe reconsider..

The specific "hate talk in homes" talking point seems to just be related to an amendment that wanted to make a exception so you could incite violence against particular groups in your own home without concern of prosecution. I feel like inciting violence is bad, even at home?

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The bill doesn't use the phrase "inciting violence" - it opts for "stirring up hatred".

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Now with the force of law.

Words have typical meanings and then they have legal meanings, you can look at the details of the first conviction under the law and draw conclusions about the threshold for "stirring up hatred": https://www.report-it.org.uk/three_men_convicted_in_first_pr...

It is very clear to me that the Scottish courts regard stirring up hatred to mean a specific threat of violence but YMMV.

Of course it's bad. The question is what's worse: that, or an overbearing government that's in the business of thought control, telling people what they are and aren't allowed to say and think in their own homes.

I have my opinions on the matter, and it's clear that Scotland has other opinions: it neither has freedom of speech and of conscience, nor wants it, and neither, it seems, do you.

And if you are upset at this "caricature" of the law and its intent, maybe you should tell Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf, who proposed it, that he ought have shut up about its explicit intent. He has been abundantly clear that it must be enforced against all utterances in the home, not just a few extreme cases where some deranged madman happens to be inciting violence from his home. The Justice Secretary specifically identified that a child’s report to a teacher of what a parent said at home should be sufficient to prosecute.

>This headline is a ridiculous caricature of the content of the bill as I understand it.

Of course it is. At this point these types of claims can just be assumed to be detached from reality and instead serving the goal of chilling speech/action.

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