The US vice-president, JD Vance, has caused quite a stir in the circles of the European and UK elites. His explosive speech in Munich may well turn out to be one of the most significant political speeches for decades. He has been accused of everything from being a fascist to a Trump stooge, but his speech deserves much more careful consideration than simple name calling and partisan abuse.
I want to examine and fact check one claim he made in the speech concerning my native country, Scotland. This was the relevant part of the speech:
“This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”
Is this true? The journalist Neil Mackay doesn’t think so. He wrote in The Herald newspaper. “Vance spewed a bunch of culture war lies about Scotland, claiming our abortion buffer zone laws banned folk from praying in their home. It’s not even worth debunking in detail. We all know it’s straight-up disinformation. We live in this country. We understand the truth.”
The National, the house newspaper of the Scottish government, was equally incandescent. It posted several articles and numerous tweets on X denouncing this ‘misinformation’.
But what is the truth? I wrote on this issue for Christian Today here and the facts are not difficult. Exclusion zones have been set up around Scottish abortion clinics seeking to ban not only protest, but any kind of presence which could be interpreted as seeking to influence someone not to have an abortion.
A letter was sent to residents within an Edinburgh exclusion area warning them that while the offences in general only applied in public places, “however activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a zone could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.” The letter warned that regulation breakers could be fined up to £10,000. Religious preaching, prayer or silent vigils could be subject to prosecution if they are done with “intent or recklessness”.
When the proposer of the Act, the Scottish Green MSP, Gillian Mackay, was interviewed by the BBC about Vance’s claims, she also pronounced that it was misinformation. She told the BBC that while letters were sent to houses within the safe access areas, silent prayer was never mentioned. But she destroyed her own case by stating that “there are no mentions of any specific behaviours even in the Act”. If her case is that since a specific behaviour is not mentioned it is not illegal, then her Act is useless. Standing outside an abortion clinic with a banner is not specifically mentioned, so according to Ms Mackay, that would not be illegal?
Everyone knows that is not true. And it’s not just protest. If you stood within an exclusion zone and prayed privately, you could be arrested and charged – as was the man in England who Vance also mentioned, Adam Smith-Connor.
And as the letter sent to households states, the same rules apply in a private house within the exclusion zone, as to other areas in that zone. Therefore, logically, if private prayer is forbidden in the exclusion zone, then it must also be forbidden in a private house. Of course, if the curtains were closed and no one else was present then no one would know, and you would not be arrested. But if you mentioned to someone, or wrote on social media that you were praying for those who were having abortions, then you could be reported for breaking the law. The police have helpfully informed us that such actions can be reported to them.
Vance’s statements on Scotland were therefore substantively correct, no matter the attempts of some politicians and journalists to misinform us.
It was also interesting that in the same interview Gillian Mackay called the US government “a regime that wants to roll back on women’s rights and misrepresent others who are seeking to advance women’s rights”. Ironic given that this week a woman is being prosecuted for misgendering someone at her work in the NHS! The Scottish government can’t defend women’s rights when it cannot tell us what a woman is.
Vance was right to point out that this is all part of a general trend where free speech within Europe is under threat. Right on cue, up steps the Scottish Greens leader, Patrick Harvie to demand that Jordan Peterson’s appearance at the Scottish Hydro be cancelled due to his controversial views. The National ran this as their headline story. Harvie, without a trace of self-awareness, stated that Peterson should be banned because he promotes ‘toxic politics’. Another Glasgow Green mentioned climate change denial as something which should also be banned.
The Hydro controversially banned Franklin Graham and ended up having to pay damages to Graham after he sued. The irony is that stating that you think Vance was right for saying that people get cancelled in Scotland, could easily end up with you being cancelled.
This authoritarian cancel culture has become deeply ingrained in much of Scotland. I recall being asked by one university to send them a copy of my sermon to a group of Christian students so that it could be vetted – a request that was politely declined! On a different occasion, a speaker at another university was asked to explain why he had liked a social media post of mine. Someone else was asked by university officials to disown the views of their father. And I think of the journalist who told me that she would love to fairly report my views but would be in danger of losing her job (or not getting promoted) if she did so. She had to tow the party line.
My final example is relevant to this particular case. I was called in to meet with senior Scottish government officials to discuss the Gender Recognition Act. Among other things, I asked that I would not be prosecuted for saying that a man could not become a woman. They told me (over five years ago) that that might be very difficult, because it could be perceived as a hate crime.
The justifications for this kind of behaviour are chillingly Orwellian. The Glasgow City Council leader, Susan Aitken, told the court in the Franklin Graham case, “My overriding concern, and I suppose the factor that ultimately was the most decisive for me in taking the view that the event should be cancelled was because I thought that – not just the expression of the views, but also the knowledge of, or the expectation that the views may well be expressed or could be expressed, which would have real life consequences for people in Glasgow.”
I would hope that any writer, communicator, politician, teacher and especially a preacher of God’s word would want their message to have real life consequences for the people we speak to. Ms Aitken represents that metro elite of the new religion – who think that they, and they alone, have the right to determine what constitutes positive life consequences, and what constitutes ‘harm’. As a result, under the guise of ‘preventing harm’, they will exclude everyone they do not agree with, in the name of inclusion. They will ban those who are not like them in the name of diversity. And they will not tolerate difference of opinion as regards their fundamental doctrines, all in the name of tolerance.
JD Vance spoke truth to power. The fact that power doesn’t like it doesn’t make it false. Would that other Christians have the courage to do so – and stop bowing the knee to the Baals of contemporary ideology.
David Robertson, a Scot in exile, Newcastle, New South Wales.
