What with the submission of the Religious Hatred Bill to Parliament, the existence of “Anti-Hate Crime” organisations and other similarly “politically correct” ideas, one would’ve thought basic criminal law wasn’t enough.

Surely a crime against a person, regardless of motive, is still a crime. If someone is physically assaulted because of their religion, their sexual persuation, their ideology, their philosophy, their job, or whatever, they are still assaulted and a crime has been committed against them. Conversely, if someone is assaulted regardless of their religion, their sexual persuation, their ideology, their philosophy, their job, or whatever, they are still assaulted and a crime has been committed against them.

What is the point of trying to bring in extra legislation to deal with particular types of crime, when existing laws are able to deal with those issues already. An incident of arson on a Mosque doesn’t need specific religious hatred legislation to be dealt with, there are already laws which deal with arson. An assault on a Hindu doesn’t need specific legislation to be dealt with, there are already laws which deal with assault. I could go on…

As such, there must be some other reason for these new bills. The religious hatred bill in particular only appears to have curtailment of free speech as an added “bonus” to existing law. It seems so badly (or well) worded that criticism of a religion could become a criminal offence. This would be bad news for everyone! Not only would the Christian feasibly not be able to be critical of Islam, the atheist would feasibly not be able to be critical of either or any religion. A significant point of free speech is the freedom to be critical of, religion, philosophy, sexual preference – of anything anyone is able to promote.

So are these proposed new measures well thought through, or just an attempt to win the votes of minorities, at the expense of the everyone?