A teenage girl apparently got drunk in public, and the family requested help to get her home.

It’s the sort of thing that happens often enough. Unfortunately, the tipsy girl–who is autistic and only semi-verbal–blurted out to her mother that one of the police officers looked like her lesbian grandmother.

Not a good move, because apparently, that is a hate crime in England. Watch how the police responded:

A autistic girl makes a comment about a police officer lookin like a lesbian like her nan.
She gets arrested for it & dragged out of her home by thugs in uniform.
This is state terrorism.
This is a Stasi state.
Your kids aren't safe.
You aren't safe no one is safe. https://t.co/dKM1jrEtHL

— Aja the Empress. The one and only.👑 (@Aja02537920) August 9, 2023

What was an unremarkable event–police escorting a misbehaving teen in the wee hours of the night–became a massive police response complete with handcuffs, long detention in a police station without a parent, and a traumatized neurodivergent child.

The West Yorkshire Police are defending their actions because suggesting a police officer looks like a lesbian is a hate crime, and they take hate crimes very seriously. That the so-called “hate crime” took place in the girl’s home, while talking to her mother about her experience, while drunk, by a teenage autistic girl…well, we can’t have anybody uttering the word “lesbian.”

“A homophobic public order offense” is the charge they are investigating. That such an offense exists is offensive.

There is so much wrong here it is hard to know where to begin. The first, of course, is that saying something that isn’t incitement to violence is an arrestable offense. Assume the girl was insulting the police officer–so what? That is rude, but I have to imagine it happens every day without consequence to anybody involved. Certainly here in the States, it is a day ending in -y for any police officer, or for that matter anybody who accidentally uses the wrong pronoun.

I have been reliably informed by all the best people that using the term “All Cops Are Bastards” is a vital public health effort.

Then there is the question that pops out at me: How can noting that somebody looks like a lesbian be considered “hate speech?” Does the officer involved hate lesbians to take such offense? Does she believe that lesbians are so despicable that anybody suggesting she shares a “look” with them has crossed an invisible line and deserves to be tortured? Is she a lesbian who hates being called one?

What, exactly, makes that “hate speech” that is punishable? An arrestable offense? For a teenage girl? Does the West Yorkshire Police think that somebody saying “lesbian” is necessarily offensive?

Then there is the question: Why is being “homophobic” a crime? It may be rude, but a crime? Apparently, it is. And the person who feels insulted gets to determine what exactly is a homophobic statement–“She looks like my lesbian Nanna” is potentially criminal, depending on whether the listener thinks the girl loves or hates her Nanna?

This is absurd, and thought control. Instead of living in a world of clearly defined crimes that can be objectively seen, felt, observed, and specified we now live in a world–throughout the Anglosphere–where some people get to interpret everything in terms of perceived motives. And only some people get protection from feeling insulted, while others are helpless to defend themselves.

Let’s say I told a cop that she was “As beautiful as Lizzo.” Could she interpret that as a fatphobic insult and arrest me? See it as an affirmation based on the fact that Lizzo is universally acknowledged by everybody in the media as a perfect specimen and thank me profusely?

Or, how about simply dealing with the fact that somebody was rude or kind and just moving on? How about that?

“Hate speech” should not be a crime. Police should have thicker skins. Nonviolent teens acting like teens should be treated with a bit of care.

And the police shouldn’t be Stasi.