A call to arms against the Hate Speech Bill

The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 (aka The Hate Speech Bill) is back in the Irish Seanad today (Wednesday 16 October). Senator Rónán Mullen issued this call to arms today on X today:

“We need to hear more from free speech activists on this Hate Crime Bill. The manipulation of definitions is the ultimate attack on freedom of expression.

Opposition to this Bill is not about letting real hatred escape punishment. That is achievable without (a) conflating ‘gender’ with ‘gender identity’ or (b) allowing the ‘progressive’ Gardai PULSE definition of hate (which is based on ‘perception’ and not on objective facts) to become the de facto understanding of what ‘hatred’ is.

Be quite clear, the proposed conflation of wording has as its fundamental objective to stop you saying that men cannot be women. Punishing hatred can be achieved by using a legislative based definition, not one that was thought up in a garda backroom.

It is legislators, not Gardai who make the laws, and the Gardai enforce them. This is not an upside-down, Alice in Wonderland democracy.”

The debate is currently underway in the Seanad. We will post updates here.

Update 20.00 on 16/10/24 (from Senator Rónán Mullen)

This Bill is being guillotined tonight for no good reason. The Dáil will have another final vote in the coming days. Tell your government TDs how serious you regard this matter and decide accordingly on election day if they pass this Bill. The expansive definition of gender will now impact on many other existing criminal law acts.

Update on 22/10/24 (from Lawyers For Justice Ireland on X @LFJIreland)

Tomorrow at 10.10 pm the Hate Crime Bill will be laid before Dáil Éireann. If the government get this over the line they fully intend to use it as a stepping stone to implement ‘hate speech’ laws, criminalising free speech. BOMBARD your TDs by copying and sending the submission below to show them that the people of Ireland are watching and will hold them to account in #GE24 if they vote in favour of the Bill:

Dear TD

The Hate Crime Bill should be scrapped in its entirety. We already have existing legislation for certain aggravated ‘hate’ offences contained in the Criminal Damage Act 1991, the Criminal Justice Public Order Act 1994, the Non-Fatal Offences Against The Person Act 1997 and the Prohibition of Incitement To Hatred Act 1989. The Bill, if passed, will be used as a stepping stone to implement draconian ‘hate speech laws’, attacking our fundamental right to free speech.

The Bill extends the definition of gender to include “the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender, or which the person identifies, and includes transgender and a gender other than male and female”. The introduction of gender identity ideology into criminal law is in direct contravention of the rule of law that legislation must be certain, clear, precise and unambiguous, and its legal implications foreseeable, particularly when the provisions contain penalties punishable by imprisonment.

Minister McEntee has attempted to justify the implementation of the Bill on the basis of “EU obligations” but even a child should know at this stage that the State use this excuse as a guise to fool the people. The Bill goes far beyond obligations of Member States as set out in the EU Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on ‘combatting certain forms of expression of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law’.

Minister McEntee has made it clear that the government are only proceeding with the ‘hate crime’ element at this stage because they do not have “consensus” for the ‘hate speech element’ but that they fully intend to implement this at a later stage. If you vote in favour of the Hate Crime Bill you are therefore complicit in enabling the government with their plan to extend the legislation to criminalise free speech.

You cannot possibly vote in favour of this Bill if you profess to uphold the principles of democracy, as the government will use it as a platform to implement laws attacking free speech. Indeed, NGOs have come out in force last week to declare that next on their agenda is to lobby the government to extend the Hate Crime Bill to ‘hate speech’ as the two are “intrinsically linked”.

Yours etc

Update 23 October: The soon to be Act passes 78 for – 50 against

Professor Gerard Casey – a member of the Dublin AFAF branch wrote on X (10.56 23/10/24)

In what, when its ratification is formally completed, we must now call the Criminal Justice (Hate Offences) Act 2024 [https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2022/105/eng/ver_c/b105c22d-p-c-sent-gr.pdf…], we are told that: “In this Act— ‘hatred’ means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics or any one of those characteristics.” You will note that in this passage, the term ‘hatred’ is either not defined or, if this passage is supposed to contain a definition, it is one that is circular and so is definitionally dysfunctional. We thus have the strange phenomenon of an Act that purports to concern itself with Hate Offences, the key term of which, is not defined! But wait, there is more! What are the protected characteristics that may be the object of hatred, whatever hatred may turn out to be? The protected characteristics listed in the Act are: race, colour, nationality, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation or disability.

You might wonder what this gender is of which the Act speaks? The Act tells us that: “‘gender’ means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.” Once again, the term [‘gender’] is either not defined or, if this passage is supposed to contain a definition, it is one that is circular and so is definitionally dysfunctional. However, unlike the case of the term ‘hate’, in the case of ‘gender’, we can glean some information from the relevant passage, namely, that when it comes to gender, there is (1) a male gender, (2) a female gender, (3) a trans gender and (4) any number of unspecified genders with which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies. The Irish state has now incorporated in legislation, the highly contested central tenet of gender ideology. All that said, there remains the larger question of whether this legislation, in which it appears that some citizens are more equal than others, is consistent with article 40.1 of the Constitution that holds that “All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law.”

Tim Crowley commented: ‘I’d go further, and suggest that ‘male’ and ‘female’ no longer have meaning, or at least no longer have their former meaning, once these terms are presented as just two among at least four, and possibly an unspecifiable number, of possible ‘genders’.

Last – but no chance to oppose the Act – @LFJIreland on X

ALL EYES ON THE PRESIDENT: HATE CRIME BILL Will Michael D. Higgins sign the Bill into law OR do the right thing and refer it to the Supreme Court for judicial scrutiny? ACT NOW by adapting the submission below and sending it to the President, who can sign the Bill 5 to 7 days after it is presented to him. FOR THE URGENT ATTENTION OF THE PRESIDENT

TO: Michael D. Higgins [email protected] Re: Criminal Justice (Hate Offences Bill) 2022

The Criminal Justice (Hate Offences Bill) 2022 (‘The Bill’) was one of five bills rushed through the Dail in six hours on 23rd October 2024 (The Irish Times 24th October 2024). Such rushed legislation demonstrates a pattern that you, Uachtarán, raised in your “unprecedented” letter to the Oireachtas in July 2021, when you expressed grave concern that you were asked to sign too much “complex” Covid legislation within a short period of time, much of which required “detailed analysis of the Constitutional implications”. No doubt you will, therefore, be extremely alarmed that no lessons have been learned by the government or the 78 TDs who voted in favour of the Bill which was passed in such lightning speed without a proper debate or legislative scrutiny.

Democracy demands that this Bill should not be signed into law, particularly as the legislation contains provisions depriving a person of their liberty. I, therefore, call upon you as President to engage your solemn power and refer the Bill to the Supreme Court on the grounds that the legislation contains provisions of such national importance they require full and proper judicial scrutiny on the Constitutional implications. Specifically, the provisions of the Bill are repugnant to Article 40.4.1 (no citizen shall be deprived of his personal liberty save in accordance with the law), Article 40.1 (all citizens shall be held equal before the law) and Article 40.6.1.ii (the right of the citizens to assemble peaceably and without arms). The Bill also has wide reaching implications on Article 40.6.1 (the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions), as the Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, has announced, the government’s intention to extend the legislation at a later date to the ‘hate speech’ element, which was “shelved” for now due to “lack of consensus”.

The provisions of the Bill undermine the rule of law that legislation must be clear, precise and unambiguous and its legal implications foreseeable, particularly as they contain increased prison sentences for offences aggravated by ‘hatred’, a term that is not defined in the legislation. The Bill extends the meaning of ‘protected characteristics’ to include gender identity, defined at Section 3 (d) as “the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female”. Such an inexplicable definition of gender has no place in the Irish Statute Book and goes far beyond the obligations of Member States to implement the provisions of Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA, which makes no reference to gender. The inclusion of such terms in the Bill, if enacted, will clearly have implications in other areas of law, including but not limited to, ‘hate speech laws’ and equality legislation.

The fact that Minister McEntee in her speech to the Dail on 23rd October 2024 explicitly referred to the provisions applying to those engaging in their right to protest is particularly worrisome, as vague legislation is wide open to abuse by successive governments to interfere with the rights of citizens.

The quick passage of the Bill through both Houses of the Oireachtas without proper scrutiny of the Constitutional implications has monumental consequences for the people of Ireland now and in the future. Only you now hold the power, Uachtarán, to uphold our Constitution and the will of the people by refusing to sign this legislation into law.

Yours etc Signed

Update: Lawyers For Justice Ireland on X on 29 October:

President Michael D. Higgins betrays the people of Ireland yet again. This morning at 11.27 Áras an Uachtaráin announced that President Higgins signed four Bills, including the Hate Crime Bill, into law. The Bill was passed by the Dail on Wednesday 23rd October. Ironically, in July 2021 President Higgins wrote an “unprecedented letter” to the Oireachtas raising his grave concerns about being sent too much complex Covid legislation in a short space of time, many of the Bills of which required “detailed analysis of their Constitutional implications and some require legal advice or consultation with the Council of State”. He clearly had no hesitation in signing the Hate Crime Bill into law at lightening speed, without a “detailed analysis of the Constitutional implications”. President Higgins could not possibly have had the opportunity to consider the implications of the provisions of the Bill on Article 40.4.1 (no citizen shall be deprived of his personal liberty save in accordance with the law), Article 40.1 (all citizens shall be held equal before the law) and Article 40.6.1.ii (the right of the citizens to assemble peaceably and without arms) and Article 40.6.1 (the right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions) nor the impact of the extension of gender to include gender identity, such inexplicable terms should have no place in our Irish Statute Books. The legislation will have far-reaching consequences on our right to free speech and freedom of assembly. The Hate Crime legislation will be used as a stepping stone to implement draconian ‘hate speech laws’. Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, has made it crystal clear the government’s intention to implement the ‘hate speech element’ at a later date, which was “shelved” for now due to “lack of consensus”. They will wait until after #GE24 as they predict they will have the numbers to pass ‘hate speech’ laws, criminalising free speech. This is NOT a President that represents the people of Ireland but instead follows the dictates of his globalist masters. The irony that in a recent interview with the Irish Times Michael D. Higgins said he “will never stop speaking out”. For whom does President Higgins “speak out”? He has demonstrated time and time again that he is willing to sacrifice the people of Ireland by signing into law legislation that attacks our Constitutional, human and civil rights. We need a root and branch transformation of our Irish society. We need a President that represents the people of Ireland and upholds our Constitution. We need a new Ireland, for the people by the people before we descend into tyranny.

No Justification for Hate Speech Laws

Tim Crowley, convenor of the Dublin Universities’ AFAF Branch, challenges a common ‘justification’ for hate speech laws:

A justification we often hear for the need for hate speech laws is the fear of the growth of far right extremism. It is often put in these terms: to prevent something like 1930s Germany happening again we need to censor hateful and offensive speech. In other words, the thought seems to be that speech restrictions—hate speech laws—would have stopped the Nazis. We have heard such rhetoric from our own politicians. Fianna Fail senator Lorraine Clifford Lee made this point in June 2023 during Second stage debates over the Hate Speech Bill: ‘It is acknowledged that the Holocaust did not happen in a vacuum, and that hate speech led to the Holocaust. Speech leads to physical attacks on people. We need to make sure we do not allow anything like that to ever happen again.’ We do indeed need to do our best to make sure this doesn’t happen again: but restricting hate speech isn’t the way to do it. Weimar Germany had laws banning hateful speech–laws that have been compared to contemporary hate speech laws. These laws did not prevent the Holocaust. On the contrary, when the Nazis came to power, they were able to use the hate speech laws on the books to their own benefit. As Greg Lukianoff points out, ‘the Nazis used these pre-existing means of censorship to crush any political speech opposing them, allowing for an absolute grip on the country that would have been much more difficult or impossible with strong legal protections for press and speech.’ There is nothing in the claim, then, made unchallenged by Clifford Lee in our Senate, that suppression of speech would have stopped the Nazis—well, nothing other than ignorance. If only more of our politicians could appreciate the words of Aryeh Neier, executive director of the ACLU in the 1970s, and someone with direct experience of Nazi Germany—who indeed lost many members of his family to the Holocaust: ‘the chances are best for preventing a repetition of the Holocaust’, he writes, ‘in a society where every incursion on freedom is resisted. Freedom has its risks. [But] suppression of freedom, I believe, is a sure prescription for disaster.’

Photo Credit: CraftyCaedus (2018) Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International