Christian artist Victoria Culf was reported to the police and banned from her own exhibition because of her gender-critical beliefs in the latest example of free speech in peril in Britain. The Telegraph has the story.
Mrs Culf launched legal action against Watford Borough Council last year on nine grounds, including breach of contract, discrimination and harassment.
The 44 year-old, who has been an artist for 20 years, had been setting up her independently funded exhibition at Watford Museum when she became engaged in a conversation with a council worker about transgender issues.
While making a cup of tea, the council official revealed that her child was “socially transitioning” and that they had tried to get puberty blockers from the Tavistock gender identity clinic.
Mrs Culf claims to have politely said that owing to her Christian beliefs and her experience working with children and young people, she believed transitioning to be harmful.
The artist claims to have also said the Tavistock clinic should be shut down, reasoning that “children are too young to properly assess risk”.
“I wouldn’t be being true to myself if I agreed with you,” she claims to have said.
While Mrs Culf believed the conversation to have ended “calmly and amicably”, she later received a call from the council informing her of “harassment” allegations and decreeing that she must give 24 hours’ notice before entering her exhibition.
Worth reading in full.
In a press release, Christian Concern says the council official lied about police investigating the incident, even making up an incident number and passing it on to the council:
Despite the conversation appearing to end amicably, the colleague later posted on social media accusing Mrs Culf of a “transphobic rant”.
This led to the council restricting her access to the exhibition and informing her that she was under police investigation for a hate crime, claims that have since been proven to be false.
The council official claimed police were investigating the incident, but police records confirm they did not log it as a crime and described Mrs Culf’s comments as protected free speech. …
The police logbook has revealed that the day after receiving the report, the police emphatically said they were not recording it as an incident or investigating it and described what Victoria had said as “free speech”.
The police log records the accuser to be “upset” after being told her report would not be taken forward.
Despite the police refusing to act, the official maintained the pretence that Mrs Culf was under police investigation, and emailed her boss at the Council to say: “The Hate Crime Officer called me. It has been logged as an incident with the number HC-08062023-0528”.
Over the following three months, Watford Borough Council continued to encourage and pressurise Be Creative to investigate Mrs Culf, treat her like a criminal and terminate her contract, which they subsequently did.
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