In census data released Thursday in Scotland, there were a number of interesting findings about LGBTQ+ and gender identity, the trans population in Scotland, and religion.
One fascinating nugget, revealed later online, mingled all three data points: JK Rowling’s religion is now officially her opposition to trans equality.
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The notoriously anti-trans Scotswoman and author of the Harry Potter book series identified herself on the Scottish census as a “believer in biology,” a cut-and-paste protest whipped up by the transphobic scolds at For Women Scotland, a gender-critical organization whose sole mission is to make life miserable for trans people in the sovereign U.K. state.
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2,883 respondents in Scotland – a country with a population of around five and a half million – wrote “believer in biology” as their religion.
“I was one of those people,” Rowling revealed.
For Women Scotland’s protest followed a judge’s ruling around the Scottish census in 2020 that people should be able to record their sex based on “biological sex, sex recognized by law, or self-identified (‘lived’) sex as at the date of the census.”
Rowling’s hostility toward the trans community is well known. The 59-year-old author has spent years denying the existence of trans women in particular and has made a habit of misgendering them. She’s on the record as willing to go to prison over the freedom to do so.
In one indication of her anti-trans mania, she denied trans people were persecuted under the Nazi regime during the Holocaust, a thoroughly documented fact.
In one ironic plot twist in her post-Harry Potter career, Rowling began writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith in 2013, erasing her own cisgender female identity. No one has tried to outlaw that particular transition.
In addition to the trans-obsessed “biology believers,” the census recorded that 51.1 percent of Scots now have “no religion,” a jump of 15 percent since the last country-wide canvass in 2011. Among those with a religious affiliation, members of the Church of Scotland made up 20.4 percent.
According to the census, about 184,000 people over 16 in Scotland identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, while close to 20,000 people described themselves as transgender or as having a trans history, about 0.44 percent of the country’s total population.
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