By: Simon Brooke :: 3 May 2023
Dear friends
We are much of an age, you and I. The past may have been a different country, and it's true that they did do things differently there; but we were there, and we saw it, and we have a duty to bear witness. When we were young, homosexuality in Scotland was illegal.
I shared a communal flat from 1973 to 1975 with leaders of the Scottish Minorities Group, so I was possibly closer to this than you were; but I'm sure that you had, as I did, friends who had been regularly harassed by the police for homosexuality, beaten up for homosexuality, hounded out of jobs for homosexuality. You may have known, as I did, people who had been imprisoned for homosexuality; you may have had friends, as I did, who were driven to suicide because of the stigma of their homosexuality.
It took a long time to achieve human rights for homosexuals in Scotland, and I am sure that you feel, as I do, that that is one of the great positive steps forward that Scotland has made in our lifetimes. But homosexuals were not the last hugely stigmatised minority in Scotland.
As I've said, I was, for a time, close to the leadership of the campaign which achieved that great step forward. So I know that transexuals were an important part of that campaign — a key part of the reason that the campaign was called the 'Scottish Minorities Group' and not (for example) 'The Scottish Gay Rights Campaign'. They worked unselfishly for homosexual rights, in the not unreasonable belief that achieving rights for one stigmatised minority would lead, in time, to achieving rights for other stigmatised minorities.
Joanna Cherry is younger than us. I don't remember (ever) meeting her; indeed, she would still have been in primary school during my years in the Edinburgh activist scene. I cannot say for certain that she knows the work that transexuals put into achieve the rights she now enjoys; but it would be surprising if she does not. And she is, as you point out, a human rights lawyer; she cannot be unaware of, she cannot have failed to think deeply about, the human rights issues around the legal recognition of transexual people. It is not credible to argue that she should be excused her views on the basis that she's simply an unthinking bigot: she's clearly not.
Cherry has a platform. She is a member of the House of Commons, and her speeches there are widely reported. She is regularly invited onto broadcast media, where she is invited to express her views on many issues. She is a leading member of the Scottish National Party, and she addresses meetings of the party all over the country. It is not the case that she has been 'cancelled'.
There's something deeply unappealing about politicians like Patel and Braverman who, having personally benefitted from Britain's historical welcome for refugees, now seek to pull up the drawbridge to prevent others from following. There's something even more unappealing about politicians like Milošević and Orbán who seek to surf to power by whipping up bigotries which they may not personally share.
It would be very harsh to bracket Cherry and Rowling with Milošević and Orbán, were it not for the fact that they certainly know of, and do little or nothing to disavow, the storm of hostility and violence being directed towards transexual people in Scotland from people who claim to be influenced by them.
A good society is a society which protects all its minorities, which seeks to redress discrimination and stigma. Yes, of course there are individual transexuals who act in antisocial ways, just as there are individual women, lesbians, journalists, and even Catholics who act in antisocial ways. But we do not seek to prevent all women from expressing their femininity, all lesbians from expressing their homosexuality, all journalists from expressing their opinion or all Catholics from expressing their faith because of the bad behaviour of isolated individuals.
A Scotland which does not cherish and protect its transexuals is a Scotland which cannot be trusted to cherish or protect any of its citizens — and is not a Scotland of which I wish to be a citizen.
This is not an issue on which people of good will can be neutral.
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