Asking about male inmates in women’s jails isn’t transphobic

One of the joys of living through a period of cultural revolution is watching all the new moralities arrive and declare themselves eternal truths. John Mason is learning this the hard way. Mason is the SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleston, a Bible-believing Christian, something of a social conservative, and known for his mercurial views on evolution, the IRA, and his conviction that the island of Skye is not really an island.

This time Mason is in trouble for more mainstream opinions, which is to say opinions that are mainstream among the general public and therefore hate crimes in the eyes of the governing class. On Wednesday, Mason used a ministerial question time in the Scottish parliament to ask the SNP justice secretary Keith Brown about biologically male prisoners being held in women’s jails. I will quote Mason’s side of the exchange in full — it will soon become apparent why — and summarise Brown’s longer responses.