Is hate speech the new blasphemy?

This is the full transcript of a speech given at Camden Town Hall for the We Need to Talk event.

In 1697, 20 year old Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead was the last person to be executed for blasphemy in the U.K. Now, “blasphemy” is so passé. Institutions have adopted the handy euphemism “hate speech” to cover their tracks when persecuting and reprimanding speech they believe to be unholy. To illustrate my point, I have taken a passage from Aikenhead’s 1696 indictment, and modernised it by replacing the “prisoner” with “TERF” and “the scriptures” with “transgender ideology”:

“The [TERF] has repeatedly maintained, in conversation[…] that [transgender ideology] is stuffed with such madness, nonsense and contradictions, that [she] admired the world being so long deluded by it.”

The protests that surround events like We Need to Talk I have only seen in the context of blasphemy. One example is the protests for the Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee play Jerry Springer the Opera, in which hundreds of religious protestors gathered outside the BBC buildings to protest their decision to air the show, calling for senior staff to be sacked. If it sounds familiar it’s because the tactics are the same.

Pious, blue haired believers frequently take to the streets with pots and pans in an attempt to deny us the right to…