TOM HARRIS: This rotten hate crime law has made Scotland an international laughing stock - and cemented JK Rowling's reputation has a courageous and principled woman

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My wife and I spent some time last week discussing what response we should make to a visit by the local police.

Should we allow them inside our home? Do I insist on having a lawyer present? Should I say nothing and insist on speaking to the officers only at the local police station? Should I accept a caution?

I do not have a guilty conscience. I have not been undertaking some disreputable or illegal activities to bolster my income. But this is Scotland in 2024. And Monday was April Fool's Day, and so the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act is now in force.

As a result we have entered an Alice in Wonderland world, where saying or writing things with which other people disagree could well land ordinary law-abiding Scots with a hefty fine or even in jail.

The new law - passed three years ago but only now taking effect, after the police spent the intervening period struggling over the practicalities of carrying out their political masters' will - makes it an offence to 'stir up hatred' against people with a protected characteristic.

Those characteristics include race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. MSPs who drafted the law left 'sex' out of the Bill's remit; Holyrood doesn't even bother hiding its misogyny any morFe.

JK Rowling has thrown down the gauntlet to Police Scotland and MSPs after the hate crime legislation came into force

As of Monday, it is illegal to 'stir up hatred' against someone who self-identifies as a gender that's different from their biological sex, but women - more than half of the population, and a group that receives more abuse, violence and threats of violence than any other - are conveniently ignored.

As a columnist I occasionally write about the culture wars and the controversy that surrounds trans women's demands to access women's spaces, including sports and prisons. Have I written anything that might, in the view of a trans activist, warrant a referral to the police under the new law? Almost certainly, I should think.

Ministers, including the then justice secretary Humza Yousaf, gave assurances as the Bill made its way through Holyrood that 'misgendering' someone - the act of referring to a trans person by their original biological sex rather than their assumed gender - would not be a crime under the new law.

But ministers have since conceded that investigating officers will have to decide whether or not to bring action against anyone who, for example, referred to a trans woman as a 'he'.

Personally, aware that trans people have a hard enough time as it is, I choose to indulge their request to be referred to by their preferred pronouns. It's no skin off my nose. Nevertheless, I have asserted certain things over the years about the reality of biological sex and how that matters far more than gender, whatever trans ideologues may claim.

First Minister Humza Yousaf gave assurances as justice secretary that misgendering would not result in a visit from the police

Women's safety, their right to privacy and their right to compete, if they wish, in women-only sports should be sacrosanct and never compromised just to avoid hurting the feelings of biological males convinced they're in the wrong bodies.

Nevertheless, the key offence created by the new Hate Crime Act is 'stirring up hatred' against one of those protected groups. But what, exactly, does 'stirring up hatred' mean? A person commits an offence under the Act if they communicate material, or behave in a manner, 'that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive' with the intention of 'stirring up hatred' based on the protected characteristics.

Police officers must decide whether an accused person used 'insulting' behaviour, and in court, the prosecution need only establish that stirring up hatred was 'likely' rather than 'intended'.

That's an absurdly low bar.

There is no doubt that I have used perfectly reasonable terms and arguments that someone somewhere will decide is 'insulting'. Such is life in modern Britain, where causing offence is the greatest crime imaginable. And in a debate where denying that 'trans women are women' is conflated with attempting to commit genocide against trans people, how likely is it that reasonable arguments will be deemed by campaigners as 'hate speech' and 'insulting' to trans people?

In a series of posts on X, JK Rowling made fun of a number of trans women - some of them criminals convicted for serious sexual offences

But I am small beer. The big prize, the greatest hate figure in the imaginations of permanently furious trans ideologues, is Harry Potter author and Scottish citizen JK Rowling.

Britain's most successful and beloved author has become the target for trans allies in recent years because of her tireless campaigning for women's rights - the right to be safe, the right to their sports, the right to privacy.

Ironically, she has long defended trans people's rights to dress and behave as they please, but like most people, she draws a line at trans women accessing women's changing rooms, facilities and jail cells.

And now Ms Rowling has thrown down the gauntlet to Police Scotland and MSPs.

A series of tweets by her on Monday made fun of a number of trans women - some of them criminals convicted for serious sexual assault, some who took women's jobs after declaring themselves to be women themselves, and some for replacing women on women-only sports teams.

She signed off with the statement: 'I'm currently out the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.'

Not for the first time I was awestruck by Ms Rowling's courage and principle. And, as I have done often in the past, I decided to retweet her, my finger poised above my keyboard.

And then I hesitated. As a journalist I understand that sharing any offending article that may be outside the law would make me just as vulnerable to prosecution as the original author.

And to my shame, like the coward that I am, I didn't retweet. And in that moment, I knew that the politicians, the trans 'allies' and ideologues, all the vested interests and opponents of free speech had won.

The 'chilling effect' that the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act was always intended to impose on Scotland was already having the desired effect. People like me all across Scotland are thinking twice about saying not only what we think, but what science and biological reality makes obvious.

No one at the time knew that Police Scotland would announce the following day that they would take no action against Ms Rowling because, in their opinion, no crime had been committed.

Holyrood has produced bad legislation in the past, but this Act is worse than anything that has gone before.

It makes Scotland and its politicians an international laughing stock. It makes the police a branch of the self-appointed Thought Police.

Having won round one of this legal pantomime, Ms Rowling has already announced she will stand with any woman who might in future be prosecuted for declaring biological facts that offend trans ideologues, establishing beyond doubt that Scotland is lucky to have her living here.

To this courageous and principled woman falls the task of taking on the entire political establishment.

For all our sakes, we must pray that she triumphs.