February 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – There was a story that circulated during the Cold War about a Soviet judge who was seen walking back to his chambers, chuckling heartily. His colleague approached him and asked him what was so funny. Oh, just a hilarious joke I heard, the judge replied. “Well, go ahead and tell me!” his colleague replied. “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” said the Soviet judge. “I just gave someone ten years for it.”
I was reminded of this little anecdote when I spotted a story in the Edinburgh News last week, gravely titled “Edinburgh labourer shouted abuse at transgender woman.” It turns out that one Graham Spiers, a father of two and a construction worker employed at the St. James construction site, was walking past a pub in Bonnington, Edinburgh, with a few buddies, when they passed a transgender woman—a biological male. Although the journalist writing the story goes to great lengths to make it sound as if Spiers was “screaming” at the apparent victim, Spiers and his friends were specifically accused of “pointing and laughing” at the person.
The man being laughed at suspected that he was being mocked for his appearance, as fiscal depute Rosie Cook told the Edinburgh Sheriff Court that the “complainer thought [the laughing and pointing] was in reference to her gender transition.” The transgender person then did what anyone would do if someone laughed at them: He promptly called the police, who take such things very seriously these days. The Edinburgh News, straining to make it sound as if the beery chuckles of a few construction workers really were a big deal, referred to the incident as an “unprovoked verbal assault on her.”
The sheriff informed Spiers that his sense of humor had “no place in today’s society,” and that his laughing and pointing were so unacceptable that he was required to pay the man he had laughed at five hundred pounds “in compensation” for inferring by his laughter that the man did not look like a woman. The Edinburgh News referred to the incident as a “confrontation” despite the fact that the groups simply walked past each other, and Spiers was actually arrested five days later his misplaced mirth. The lawyer for the transgender complainant stated solemnly that Spiers now understands that his actions had been “disturbing for the complainer.”
Sheriff Robert Fife also piled on, informing Spiers that, “Your offensive comments were not funny at the time and are not funny now. Your children should grow up understanding gender differences and would be ashamed at your behavior that comes from a different era has no place in today’s society.” Fife then told Spiers that in addition to the cash he had to pay to the biological man for laughing at him, he also had to pay an additional fine of another five hundred pounds.
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Consider this situation for a moment. A construction worker laughs at a biological man attempting to become a woman. Sure, we can agree that laughing at someone is a rude way to deal with any situation, but it was laughing. And Spiers was laughing because the man posing as a woman was very obviously not pulling it off, which happens to be true for most of those who are attempting to force the rest of us to play along with their delusions. And for that—for laughing—he was quite literally arrested, told by law enforcement that he had no right to find such a thing funny, ordered to pay the transgender person an exorbitant amount of money for hurting his feelings, and then pay more on top of that.
It is disgusting enough that law enforcement would arrest and charge someone for this triviality. That alone indicates that freedom in Scotland is truly dead. But the fact that law enforcement then lectured Spiers on being a throwback from a different age (that different era being about a decade ago, for the record) and telling him his children should be ashamed of him? And that Spiers was expected to cower and listen to this tongue-lashing from his betters so he could get re-educated and realize that men could now become women and that laughing at their attempts was forbidden by law? That should absolutely repulse any liberty-loving person and terrify everyone who values freedom.
As I wrote last week, the transgender movement has to impose their ideology on the rest of us with the power of the state because it is not a grassroots movement. Most ordinary people still find the entire phenomenon absurd, and there are even a few construction workers out there with the gall to chuckle at a man attempting to be a woman after they’ve had a few beers. But be careful: Your chuckles might end up putting you in handcuffs.
Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In his fourth episode, he speaks with Melissa Ohden, a survivor of a saline abortion in 1977 that lasted over five days. You can subscribe here, and listen to the episode below:
