The social media comments made by a transgender worker at Aberdeen University after the death of Ann Widdecombe were vile. They were cruel, nasty, and utterly lacking in common decency. To rejoice at another person’s death, and even to express the hope that they suffered, is to reveal something deeply disturbing about the human heart.
Those remarks also expose the hollowness of the popular claim that the political left occupies the moral high ground of compassion and kindness. There are many decent people on the left, just as there are many decent people on the right. But the myth that one side possesses a monopoly on love while the other is driven by hatred is just that, a myth. When ideological opponents are dehumanised, the language of tolerance quickly gives way to the language of contempt.
Yet there is another issue here, and it is one that deserves careful reflection. The university employee has now been arrested and charged over those online comments after Police Scotland initially concluded there was no criminality. The legal process must now take its course, and we should not prejudge either the facts or the outcome. Nevertheless, however offensive those remarks were, they were expressions of opinion. Ugly opinions, certainly. Morally reprehensible opinions. But opinions nonetheless.
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