Moreover, for every 100 000 people in London, there were 168 knife offences in 2017-18, with separate figures, from the mayor’s office, showing that young black and minority ethnic teenage boys and men were disproportionately affected, as both victims and perpetrators.
Instead of focusing attention on the real problems facing law enforcement, police have been hounding Christians. A British Catholic journalist, Caroline Farrow is being investigated for allegedly “misgendering” someone in a tweet.
Farrow was contacted by authorities after making an appearance on a TV programme Good Morning Britain, in which she engaged in a debate with a transgender activist, Susie Green, who has a trans child. Farrow allegedly referred to Green’s daughter, Jackie, by the wrong pronoun after the broadcast in September last year.
In a series of tweets, the journalist – a mother of five – revealed that the police approached her because she “needed to be interviewed under caution for misgendering Susie Green’s child”.
Farrow pointed out that, since the police announced that they would be taking action against her, online trolls have been sending her and her family, expletive-laden and sexually violent messages.
But the police have remained highly concerned about Farrow’s alleged “misgendering” instead and have simply ignored the transgressions against the Farrow family.
I have pointed out to the police that I am a Catholic journalist/commentator and it is my religious belief that a person cannot change sex. That we are in the middle of a national conversation about what it means to be male and what it means to be female.
— Caroline Farrow (@CF_Farrow) March 18, 2019
Meanwhile a group of people have terrified and harassed my family. Doxed my children, made violent and sexual threats, signed me up to porn accounts, did the same to my husband, threatened to visit here. And tumbleweed…
— Caroline Farrow (@CF_Farrow) March 18, 2019
It appears that doxing children, inundating the family with death threats and threatening a journalist with a prison sentence for “misgendering” – or some would say accurately gendering someone – is fully justified in the eyes of British law enforcement to prevent hurting someone’s feelings.
Conservative Party MP Sir John Hayes recently warned that “the ‘golden era’ of religious liberty may be coming to an end.”
He explained:”Religious believers are, once again, facing increased pressure to restrict their faith to the ‘private sphere.’ We now see regular, and increasingly unapologetic, persecution of Christians who remain committed to biblical teaching, refusing to bow to liberal, secular orthodoxies.”
Gordon Larmour, a Scottish evangelist, was arrested in July 2016 after he answered questions from a gay teenager about the Christian view on homosexual practice. Larmour referred to the Book of Genesis and stated that God created Adam and Eve to produce children.
Larmour’s response angered the young man, who called police and told them that Larmour had made “homophobic” remarks. Larmour was arrested and charged with behaving in a “threatening and abusive manner aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation” and “assault.” In January 2017, Kilmarnock Sheriff Court found Larmour “not guilty” after Sheriff Alistair Watson established that the evidence against him was unconvincing.
Larmour told the Scottish Mail on Sunday: “The police didn’t listen to me. They took the young homosexual guy’s side straight away and read me my rights.
“I feel they try so hard to appear like they are protecting minorities, they go too far the other way. I want to be able to tell people the good word of the gospel and think I should be free to do so. I wasn’t speaking my opinions — I was quoting from the Bible.
“I think the police should have handled it differently and listened to what I had to say. They should have calmed the boy down and left it at that.
“In court the boy’s friend told the truth — that I hadn’t assaulted him or called him homophobic names. I had simply answered his question and told him about Adam and Eve and Heaven and Hell. Preaching from the Bible is not a crime.”
Many of those accused of allegedly breaking the law, had made public proclamations of Christian sexual ethics. A free speech clause, tabled by Lord Waddington as section 29JA in the Public Order Act 1986, assures however that public criticism of gender is lawful. The police have ignored that nevertheless.