Transgender campaigners have too much say over expanding hate crime laws, says top judge

The trick is finding groups with different views. When nearly every single organisation is captured by the Woke...

But I guess they do exist. LGB Alliance, Fair Play For Women, Transgender Trend. They need to be explicitly looking for differing views like that, not just 1 org per identity group, so they get all-Woke.

Like the World Rugby thing...

I wouldn't mind Stonewall getting X hours of input as long as other groups with different views were getting X hours of input, and they were all being taken as seriously.

No, me neither.

I think his words are better than the headline - it's not that they have "too much" say as such. Consultation is good!

It's that it's unbalanced - "relied too much on a "narrow" range of campaign groups".

I wouldn't mind Stonewall getting X hours of input as long as other groups with different views were getting X hours of input, and they were all being taken as seriously.

I particularly liked this, and I haven't seen much acknowledgement of it in this way before:

"[The Commission’s consultation] draws unnecessarily and extensively on contentious and controversial sociological theories, with scant critical evaluation, seemingly unaware of how contentious these theories are.

I think they did? Or did they change that bit at the last minute, but it was definitely on the table.

The Equal Treatment Bench Book also comes up. This was brought up at Maya's hearing. It has a big sway on how judges respond to trans and yet it isn't law. It is the Stonewall Equal Treatment Bench Book

Great to see a judge speaking out and naming Stonewall too.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the Commission has already backed down on one proposal for offensive family dinner table comments to be classified as a hate crime.

The Law Commission gave a quote to the Telegraph:

A Law Commission spokesman said: “The Commission has consulted extremely widely, talking to organisations and individuals with a broad range of views. We have received over 2500 responses to the hate crime consultation demonstrating that it has been thorough, open and fair. We are carefully considering these responses which will inform the recommendations that we make in our final report later this year.

“Hate Crime is a complex and sensitive area of the law and, while the Commission can recommend options for legal reform, it will ultimately be for Government and Parliament to decide which of these recommendations to implement.

“The Law Commission can only undertake projects following a request from a Government Minister. It has no powers to implement changes it recommends."

Elsewhere in the article

"The Commission has already backed down over one proposal that could have classed offensive dinner table comments made in private as hate crimes."

More of the Judge's comments in this Telegraph article, but I can't seem to find a link in either newspaper article to the piece they are taken from:

Charles Wide, a former senior Old Bailey judge, said the plans drawn up by the Law Commission for the Government relied too much on a "narrow" range of campaign groups espousing "contentious and controversial" sociological theories.
In a pamphlet for the think tank Policy Exchange, Judge Wide said that by contrast the views of other groups and members of the public who challenged such theories - often in the face of a vitriolic backlash - had been ignored.
He singled out the apparent influence of the campaign group Stonewall on the Commission in the controversial debate over claims that gender is a social construct rather than determined by birth alone.
"[The Commission’s consultation] draws unnecessarily and extensively on contentious and controversial sociological theories, with scant critical evaluation, seemingly unaware of how contentious these theories are. There is a lack of balance," said Judge Wide.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/03/transgender-campaigners-have-much-say-expanding-hate-crime-laws/

So what are they going to do about it?

Sunlight.

Writing for the think tank Policy Exchange, he said: 'No adequate thought seems to have been given to the difficulty of reaching beyond a limited range of academics and organisations to the full variety of academic voices, organisations, commentators and members of the public who have no organisation to speak for them.'

He suggested that the 'fear of a Twitter storm or a visit by the police' because of stricter rules could soon be 'enough to silence' anyone from challenging orthodoxies.

'It should be a matter of real concern if the Law Commission is morphing, at least in part, into an engine of social change, pursuing agendas of its own formulation, having a privileged position close to the heart of Government,' he said.

Very sensible comments. I hope people listen.