Tuesday 11 December 2012

Your Horse is Gay!



Homosexuality is just so gay.  I could be prosecuted in England for writing that.  Why?  Because someone or other might conclude that there’s a wounding intent in my words; someone or other might feel ‘insulted’ by my – alleged – inference.  Someone or other might inform the police, who might very well arrest me for a breach of the Public Order Act.

This is just too, too absurd, I can almost hear you thinking.  No reasonable plod would consider such a thing.  A policeman’s lot may not be a happy one, but policemen, by and large are not a stupid lot.  Well, then, let me offer you a different view.

Sam Brown, an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, was out with friends celebrating the end of his exams.  Passing a mounted policeman, he asked in jocular high spirits “Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?”  What happened next was not at all gay.  Oxford’s underemployed police people arrested Brown for his ‘homophobic’ remark. 

He was handcuffed and bundled off to the local Bastille for a breach of section five of the 1986 Public Order Act, which outlaws ‘insulting words or behaviour.’  Once inside, the Keystone Cops tried to extort an £80.00 ($130) fixed penalty notice.  He quite rightly refused to pay.  Locked up overnight, he was taken to court the following day, where prosecutors – not quite as dim as Oxford’s finest – immediately dropped the case. 

It’s laughable, I know, but it actually gets worse.  Have you ever said boo to a goose?  Just be careful if you do, because a sixteen year old boy from Newcastle in the north-east of England was arrested for saying ‘woof’ to a dog.  This was within the earshot of local police.  He was fined £50 ($80) with £150 ($240) costs for ‘threatening behaviour’ a decision later overturned on appeal by a jury.  The whole silly affair was no joke on taxpayers, because it allegedly cost them £8000 ($12800).   

Another case concerns a boy who held up a placard saying “Scientology is a dangerous cult”, fair comment, in my view, unless you are a scientologist, in which case it’s an ‘insult.’  His offence was reported and he was arrested. 

It’s impossible to make this sort of thing up, and I can assure you I did not.  It would be risible, a massive laugh at the expense of a stupid and literal-minded police force if it did not present genuine dangers to free speech.  No-one likes to be insulted but in a free society no-one has a right to expect not to be insulted. 

For some time now campaigners including David Davis, a former government minister, and Rowan Atkinson, the comedian, have been urging a change in the law.  Atkinson has attacked what he calls a “creeping culture of censoriousness.”  I would go further and attack a creeping culture of mind-numbing stupidity, especially on the part of the police. 

The little light of sanity has at last broken through the fog.  Tomorrow Geoffrey Dear, a former Chief Constable who now sits in the House of Lords, the venerable branch of the British Parliament, will table a motion calling for an amendment to the Act.  This, if passed, and accepted by the government, will remove the word ‘insulting’ from the legislation.  The measure is apparently backed now by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Actually I wonder if the legislation is the problem.  It’s really just a symptom, not the disease.  The disease is stupidity coupled with the growth of thin-skinned sensitivity.  I’m sure that in the past, even in the time when the legislation was first put on the statute book, people would never have imagined that public order measures could be put to such facile use.  There have always been those who are prepared to take offence at the least thing.  For the law to give support to each and every silly ass who can’t take a joke is, quite frankly, beyond a joke.  

17 comments:

  1. Policemen tend not to be intellectual giants. They are probably only twice as clever as the average politician or news reporter. Laws should be carefully drafted with these limits in mind.

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    1. Oh, Calvin, all that's really required is a tiny bit of common sense. Common sense? I begin to wonder if it's as common as supposed.

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  2. The defamation of this noble animals character is indeed beastly; many an Englishman is afflicted with the inability to differentiate arse from quim ?

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  3. "The disease is stupidity coupled with the growth of thin-skinned sensitivity."

    But Anna, has that not been part of the outcome of the politicians attempts at social engineering? Have we not become 'conditioned' to object to 'insult'? (Aided and abetted by the No-Win, 9-Fee brigade, natch)

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  4. I could be prosecuted in Englandfor writing that.

    There'd be one hell of a reaction if you were.

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  5. "Actually I wonder if the legislation is the problem."

    I wonder not it indeed is. Nearly everything we do has unintended consequences as Newtons 3rd law is as true to life as it is to physics. For example throw a ball against a wall and an equal force is felt by the body. Normally the body mass is such that there are no serious consequences however throw the ball whilst standing on roller skates and the possibility exists that the thrower can end up falling flat on his/her face. This is no less true of legislation so legislators must ensure that laws are bound up in language and intent that are firmly based and are not too open to multi-interpretation. However of late mostly from the coming to government of New Labour, the EU and ECHR there has been a tremendous rise in the numbers of laws and regulations put on the statute books. As standards and values have declined at the same time in society that have permeated through to our politicians and the civil servants that serve them mediocracy has become the norm and ineptitude has been the consequence hence the laws have been badly drafted and/or put in place for the wrong reasons; to further ideology or as a knee-jerk reaction to populist demands or as a reaction to perceived threats that are blown out of all proportion. So yes it is the legislation that is at fault because those charged with ensuring their compliance do not know what the lawmakers intent is other than which is written in the legislation. Being human and therefore fallible common sense is not a uniform concept and enforcement of the law should not rely too heavily on it's use. Laws should be drafted with a lowest common denominator view so that all can easily understand the intent.

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    1. Very well said, my friend. The thing is, though, in the past people would bring a smidgen of maturity and good sense to the interpretation and application of law, even badly-worded law. Not any longer. Laws should be drafted with the terminally stupid in mind, with no room at all for leeway.

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  6. There was a psychological revolution in the fabled 60's. Reason and objectivity went by-the-way-side. Leaving man devoid of emotion; yet overwhelmed in feeling. Having no way to understand their plight, since there is no world outside of their imagination--and the self as personality determinant was also toppled; they began to conceive a world. So with an abandoned self, they wonder their place in the 'bio-sphere', aloof from autonomy. With that dismantling of civilizations order, came a call against sexism and heterosexuality. To prove one is in this postmodern society; one is expected to explore sodomy--not with the opposite sex--but with each-other. As they now expect you to journey to 'girl power' and affirm that you are heterosexual by sexually exploiting yourself.

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    1. Thanks, Mr Mcgranor. Sometimes I'm not sure if I am going mad or if I am one of the few sane people left!

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