By Andrea Widburg
As a college student, I spent a wonderful year in Leeds, England, a rugged British town in Yorkshire. Unlike England’s south, which had an international feel, Leeds felt untouched by that trend. Now, though, Leeds has a distinctly Soviet or Maoist feel. Or, in homage to one of England’s greatest writers, an Orwellian feel. At least, that’s the takeaway from a horrific video that shows a terrified autistic girl being arrested by seven officers. Her crime: Saying that a butch-looking female police officer reminded the girl of her lesbian grandmother.
You’ll need a bit of historic and legal context to understand what’s happening in the video: It was England that gave our Founders the idea that free speech is essential for a free nation. The English Bill of Rights, which Parliament enacted in 1689, held that “it is the right of subjects to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.” There’s the genesis for our First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”
However, the same Revolution that gave Americans a much broader speech right than existed in Britain actually destroyed free speech in the mother country. That’s because, when the colonists began to speak freely against the draconian laws that Parliament imposed on them, Parliament announced that the Bill of Rights of 1689 did not apply to it; it applied only to the king. That meant that there were no limitations on Parliament’s ability to attack speech.
Despite Parliament’s 18th-century renunciation of free speech, the tradition nevertheless persisted in England for a long time, right until leftists really got their talons into the British government. Now, England has “hate speech laws” that make it a criminal offense to engage in speech that the government dislikes.
In 1986, England made it a felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison, to make negative remarks about race that were intended to or likely would stir up racial hatred.
In 2006, England made it a felony to do anything that could be perceived as “stir[ring] up religious hatred.” The law was a muddy mess that tried to allow members of one faith to attack another faith’s doctrine and to say one disliked that faith, as well as to advocate for one’s own faith. The real kicker to that law, though, came in 2008, when the act was amended to make it illegal to incite hatred on the ground of sexual orientation. In 2013, another act silenced any criticism of same-sex marriage.
Given that the Bible is opposed to homosexuality, these laws were used to silence Christians (although, weirdly, not Muslims, who are also opposed to homosexuality). If you follow events in England, you know that opposing homosexuality is now one of the most serious crimes there.
This little history gets us to the video you are about to see:
The intro to the video states:
This is what police do when dealing with autistic children. my daughter told me the police officer looked like her nanna who is a lesbian. The officer obviously took it the wrong way and said it was a homophobic comment (it wasn’t)…the officer then entered my home and assault me. my daughter was having panic attacks from being touched by them and they still continued to manhandle her.
Lest you think this is a self-serving statement, you can hear one of the male officers saying that the reason for the arrest is that the girl made a homophobic statement to his colleague. And, indeed, the girl was charged with a “homophobic public order offence.”
The officers also physically abused the screaming teenager, pulling on her arms despite being advised that the girl had severe scoliosis.
According to the Daily Mail, an official for the West Yorkshire police has issued a statement saying the video doesn’t show the whole story. I’m sure that’s true.
But it’s enough for outrage that a person was arrested for saying a police officer looks homosexual. That is, she apparently wasn’t arrested for incitement (i.e., “Let’s kill all the homosexuals”) but for pure speech. As a caveat, if it turns out that she was making manifestly criminal threats, then everything I’ve written below becomes irrelevant.
What seems to have happened is that she offended a police officer and has been criminally charged for doing so. (And yes, I do see the irony in it being considered “offensive” to say someone looks lesbian. That police officer sounds like a homophobe.)
The nation that gave us the idea that you can freely state your opinions to the government now arrests and charges autistic teenagers for saying that a police officer looks homosexual.
And don’t fool yourself: This is what Democrats want for America. They understand that the Constitution is just a piece of paper. Just as Parliament once disavowed the Bill of Rights of 1689, Democrats will toss the Constitution aside as the foul fruit of a racially poisonous tree. That the concept of free speech is a universal one that benefits every human being is irrelevant. They want it gone.
The British used to sing, “There’ll always be an England.” Well, that’s clearly not true and, at the rate England is going, there shouldn’t always be an England. And at the rate America is going, the same is true here.