The Other McCain

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British Court Rules It’s OK to Call ‘Stephanie Hayden’ a ‘Pig in a Wig’

Posted on | December 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

Not a woman: Anthony Halliday (left) as ‘Stephanie Hayden’ (right).

Last year I described this menace to society:

Anthony Halliday changed his name to “Stephanie Hayden” and became a transgender activist in England who “regularly threatens gender identity disbelievers with civil or criminal lawsuits, or attempts to have them ousted from their careers.”

Now a British appeals court has ruled against Halliday/“Hayden”:

Judges have insisted that freedom of speech includes the ‘right to offend’ in a landmark ruling which could help to turn the tide on ‘woke’ intolerance after a feminist who called a transgender woman a ‘pig in a wig’ and a ‘man’ was cleared.
Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby said: ‘Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.’
They added that ‘free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another’. The judgment from two senior members of the judiciary will set a precedent for future cases involving freedom of speech.
The ruling has emerged only now, but came in the successful appeal decided last week in favour of mother-of-two Kate Scottow, from Hitchin in Hertfordshire, after she had been found guilty under the 2003 Communications Act earlier in the year.
Miss Scottow told The Daily Telegraph: ‘It was necessary to enshrine one of the most fundamental rights of every living being in a democratic society – the right to freedom of speech that is now routinely attacked…’ But Miss Hayden said: ‘This is… a kick in the teeth to the entire LGBT community.’

(You know what, “Miss Hayden”? Maybe “a kick in the teeth” was long overdue to stop transgender bullies like you.)

Miss Scottow was arrested in 2018 and taken from her children and into custody after referring to trans woman Stefanie Hayden as a man, a ‘racist’ and a ‘pig in the wig’. Miss Hayden, 47, reported the online remarks to police.
[Scottow] had been arrested by three police officers in 2019 at her home in Pirton near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in front of her daughter, 10, and son, 20 months. Boris Johnson later called it an abuse of power.
In February this year radical feminist Miss Scottow, 40, was handed a two-year conditional discharge, and ordered to pay £1,000 compensation, with district judge Margaret Dodds telling her: ‘Your comments contributed nothing to a debate. We teach children to be kind to each other and not to call each other names in the playground.’
But, overturning the decision, Mr Justice Warby explained that the relevant parts of the Communications Act ‘were not intended by Parliament to criminalise forms of expression, the content of which is no worse than annoying or inconvenient in nature’.
Mr Justice Warby also suggested that the prosecution had been an ‘unjustified state interference with free speech’.

Well, a small victory for free speech, but I’d still be happier if “Stephanie Hayden” got a kick in the teeth, literally. In America, we can say that.



 

Comments

One Response to “British Court Rules It’s OK to Call ‘Stephanie Hayden’ a ‘Pig in a Wig’”

  1. FMJRA 2.0: Eastbound & Down : The Other McCain
    December 28th, 2020 @ 12:52 am

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