I've actually read the post now. A bit of a ramble but I agree with most of what is said.
I have some conflicting views in my own head over the whole thing. After enough years living with British people I can see that a lot of them see Irish Republicanism as a dirty word, as obviously wrong and everything connected with it wrong - and there should be no excuse of being outwardly supportive of such organisations, ever.
Unfortunately there is probably no talking to these people, because they neither have the time nor the inclination to actually learn anything about Irish history, the Oscar Wildes and the James Joyces, the mostly Presbyterian Irish Republican movement the United Irishmen - the Protestant yet Irish republican roots even in my own family (my mother's maiden name is Williamson and my own name Reid is and Old English name). They have no inclination to learn what made normal everyday people in a supposedly liberal western democracy feel as if they needed to join a paramilitary force, and why a state would introduce internment without trial while engaging in, what has now been proven as, murder of it's own citizens. No, to be outwardly Irish Republican though is to be a bigot.
So in saying this we get a bunch of Scottish neds running about spouting songs when they themselves have not even bothered their arses to learn anything about Irish history - and I'm sure the songs themselves are not going to help educate those who fear or hate nationalist Irish politics.
So yes it's just frustrating that people like myself, an atheist with an Ulster Protestant missus and kids who go to mixed non religious schools, get lumped in with the idiots and be labelled as sectarian - and that in effect some aspects of my ideology are being criminalized in that for me to sing a Irish Republican song in Scotland could lead to my arrest. It's an erosion of the fundamental freedom to free speech and in itself is a little sectarian, since I would be completely free to sing songs of British military history despite it arguably having much more 'black spots' on it's face than the Irish political history in question.