Hello boys and girls, I thought we might do today’s column in the style of Police Scotland’s “Hate Monster” campaign. Perhaps we could talk about all those naughty-waughty people who don’t know how to control their hate, mainly horrible white men from deprived backgrounds. What’s that, Sooty? You think the public should be treated like adults? Ok then.

For those who haven’t seen the campaign yet, do please seek it out and ask yourself why public information adverts are being written in the style of Roger Hargreaves only not as sophisticated. The campaign seeks to define the meaning of hate in the context of the Scottish Government's new legislation, and you may have heard Michael Gove trying to do something similar with extremism this week, but it seems to be that the more we talk about hate and extremism, the less we seem to understand what they are.

It doesn’t help that those two words, hate, extremism, have become so ubiquitous of late, used and abused by the right and the left to describe whoever they perceive as the enemy, and it’s particularly true in the debate over gay and trans identity. Gender-critical campaigners (i.e. concerned about the consequences of making it easier for trans people to change their gender) are often described as hateful/bigoted/far-right/you name it even though their arguments are perfectly reasonable. I remember a placard at one of the protests I’ve been to: “Women’s rights are not hateful”. True.

I also remember one of the women at that event – reasonable, thoughtful, but angry – telling me about her concerns over where we’re heading with all of this. Standing outside Holyrood on a freezing winter’s day, she said the fact people like her were described as hateful was degrading the debate and excluding reasoned and informed argument. “We’ve lost the space to disagree respectfully,” she said. Also true.

Take the latest embarrassing episode at the Scottish Parliament. A woman turned up this week for an event hosted by the MSP Tess White and was told she would have to remove a badge she was wearing. The badge said “Scottish Lesbians”, which is one of the groups that has campaigned on the trans issue from a gender-critical perspective. Security told the woman that the badge promoted a “partisan message” and was against the rules of the parliament.

But let’s look at the rules, and at how they’re being enforced. What the code of conduct says is that the display of banners, flags or political slogans, including on clothing and accessories, is not permitted, but the logic of the rule is not explained. Presumably the security guard was trying to explain it himself when he said partisan messages are not allowed, but how logical is that in a place that’s built on partisanship? A ban on disruptive protest is understandable but quietly and peacefully making your point with a badge isn’t disruptive; it’s simply making a political point in a place designed for people to make political points.

The Herald:

And it isn’t as if the rule isn’t broken by others every day. MSPs and staff routinely wear badges promoting various causes most would consider neutral – charitable causes for example – but others would absolutely see as partisan. The remembrance poppy for example. For some on the left, it’s a controversial political symbol promoting militarism and war and while I disagree with that view, the fact some people feel that way should mean that, if the rules are to be applied consistently, the poppy should be banned from parliament as a partisan symbol just like the Scottish Lesbians badge.

I must say my first preference would be that the managers of the Scottish Parliament look again at their fatuous rule and abolish it, but if they’re not going to do that, they should at least apply it consistently. A spokesperson for Scottish Lesbians said after the badge incident that the woman who was asked to remove it was then checked in by a member of Holyrood staff wearing a rainbow lanyard. As you know, the rainbow colours promote LGBTQ causes (L standing for Lesbian by the way) and if the phrase “Scottish Lesbians” is partisan then so is the rainbow.

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Fortunately, the MSP Jeremy Balfour has now written to the presiding officer asking for the Scottish Lesbians episode to be investigated. In his letter, he points out that in another incident at Holyrood, a woman was asked to remove a scarf because it was in the suffragette colours. “Rainbow colours are fine and some political statements are fine,” writes Mr Balfour, “but not those by women who disagree with the Scottish Government’s views on women’s sex-based rights.”

I respectfully agree with Mr Balfour and the MP Joanna Cherry who says what happened this week looks like a clear case of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation which is prohibited by the Equality Act. If nothing comes of Mr Balfour’s call for an investigation, it is important that the Scottish Government (probably not this one) looks again at the code of conduct.

The Government should also consider what kind of signal is being sent out by what happened the other day. Scottish Lesbians are told, in the Scottish Parliament, they cannot wear a badge that says Scottish Lesbians. Yes, the badge represents a group on one side of a difficult debate, but the other side is regularly represented in parliament (see the rainbow).

It is also extraordinary that public discourse has become so poisonous and divided and so reduced by puerile over-simplification (see the hate monster) that Holyrood appears to have a problem with the phrase Scottish lesbians. I must admit, I’m not entirely sure how we got to this point, but I do know that it can’t go on.