‘SNP’s flawed gender self-ID Bill enables predatory men to masquerade as women’

The case of a sex offender who was dressed as a woman when kidnapping an eleven-year-old girl exposes the dangers of the Scottish Government’s gender self-ID Bill, columnists have warned.

Andrew Miller, who has been using the name Amy for six years, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail, after pleading guilty to the abduction and sexual assault of a child in the Scottish Borders.

Writing separately in The Scotsman, columnists Susan Dalgety and Euan McColm both said the ruling debunks Deputy First Minister Shona Robison’s claim there is “no evidence that predatory and abusive men have ever had to pretend to be anything else to carry out abusive and predatory behaviour”.

Flaws exposed

In Miller’s sentencing, Lord Arthurson stated: “One only has to ask oneself the simple question: would an 11 year old girl have willingly entered your car had you presented as a man? The answer is that obviously she would not. Your intentions were wicked and predatory, and clearly involved a substantial component of planning.”

One only has to ask oneself the simple question: would an 11 year old girl have willingly entered your car had you presented as a man? Judge Lord Arthurson

Dalgety commented: “In the end, it was the judiciary that exposed the SNP’s flawed gender reform bill for what it is – a license for predatory and abusive men to pretend to be something they are not, in order to carry out their predatory and abusive behaviour.”

She urged Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf to withdraw The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, branding it “bad legislation that was, in part, his predecessor’s nemesis”.

Sturgeon resignation

Scotland’s Outer House of the Court of Session is currently considering whether the UK Government’s veto of Holyrood’s gender self-ID Bill was reasonable and lawful.

The Bill seeks to allow 16-year-olds to change their legal sex by self-declaration without a medical diagnosis, and reduce the waiting time for adults from two years to just three months.

When Nicola Sturgeon resigned as First Minister in February, commentators claimed that championing the unpopular proposals lost her support in the SNP and in the country.

Former BBC journalist Iain Macwhirther said that when convicted rapist Adam Graham was placed in a segregated unit in a women’s prison it caused a “moral and political Chernobyl”, which intensified when Sturgeon refused to admit whether he was a man or a woman because “affirming his biological sex might undermine her Gender Recognition Reform Bill”.