ClumsyMonkey.net

I firmly support freedom of speech with very few restrictions. Someone brought up the idea that freedom of speech does not protect hate speech. I have to disagree. My main reasoning for this is that what defines "hate speech" is open to interpretation.

Example: The Klan organizes a racist demonstration in which no physical violence occurs. I show up at the demonstration to protest the Klan's views. A gov't official says the Klan is speaking hate and should be censored. However, the Klan then objects saying that my protest of their views was showing my hate of them. Obviously my opinion is that the Klan is the hateful organization and I am speaking for "anti-hate". But do you see how it can be viewed both ways?

I guess what I am trying to say is that as soon as hate speech is not protected as free speech, my right to speak out against hate speech is threatened.

Yes, the cartoons were offensive and I definately can see where anger would arise. There could be numerous ways to vent this anger. One would be to make a cartoon of your own showing the ignorance of the writer. Another would be to write to the editor of the paper and express your anger and ask for the chance to show your side in a future issue. These would be reasonable ways to deal with a tasteless and rude cartoon, and there could be a ton more. Violence is not the way to deal with problems...especially senseless problems like a simple cartoon, as offensive is it may be.

Why aren't they printing it?

That irritates me.

bovine wrote:I firmly support freedom of speech with very few restrictions. Someone brought up the idea that freedom of speech does not protect hate speech. I have to disagree. My main reasoning for this is that what defines "hate speech" is open to interpretation.

Example: The Klan organizes a racist demonstration in which no physical violence occurs. I show up at the demonstration to protest the Klan's views. A gov't official says the Klan is speaking hate and should be censored. However, the Klan then objects saying that my protest of their views was showing my hate of them. Obviously my opinion is that the Klan is the hateful organization and I am speaking for "anti-hate". But do you see how it can be viewed both ways?

This may be true for America, I'm not 100% sure. In a country like Canada however, "hate speech" does have a legal definition and precedent has been set on what counts as hate speech by the supreme court of Canada. Hate speech is outwardly expressing hate towards a visible minority group. Or something like that. I assume America, Denmark and other developed countries would also have legal defintions of it.

Where do you draw the line though?

I'm pretty pro free speech. Even if it offends me, it is that persons right to express their opinions.

Hate preaching shouldn't be allowed. Thats where free speech should draw the line.

Yeah but what is hate preaching? It's a personal thing. People bash Bush all the time on the CM, to a devout Republican, that's hate preaching.

You can't draw a clear line in the sand, it isn't possible.

Klan rallies are a prime example of hate preaching. They openly attack people's ethnical backround at their rallies or even on their website(I don't know if they have a site, but I am assuming they do) Thats where limitations should be put into place.

And you really can't compare to Bush hating to hate preaching. Those are two different things.

No they aren't. If I ran about saying how I hated Bush(Which I do, haha), someone who likes/loves him can interpret that as hate preaching.

I openly have attacked peoples republican backgrounds. That's "hate preaching".

Your idealogy towards this is extremely flawed. We do not live in a black and white world. This isn't cut and paste.

The fact that Finsbury Park Mosque is a religious institute that still exists, is an example of hate speech being ignored. It seems easy to identify something that is directed towards a religion as hate speech, but a remark within a religious book, or practised within religious institutes isn't hate speech?

For example?

The Old Testament
The Quran

The Old Testament certainly does not contain "hate speech."

I actually agree with you there. The Old Testament is violent, but not in the context I stated above. My wrong.

Alright, fair enough.

It could be hate speech to someone who hates God.

This is why free speech should really be free. No matter what you do, someone is going to be offended by what you feel.

Yes, the Muslim cartoon was very offensive, and yes it obviously upset a great volume of people, but it is ones right to express their own opinion.

How is the Old Testament hate speech to someone who hates God?

I hope this grammatically makes sense

Well Okay, there are people out there who think that having a God, is blasphemy to them. And obviously the old testament is a proponent to monotheism. Therefore those people who found it blasphemous COULD say it is hate speech.

It just supports the fact that you can't draw some indelible line about what is hateful and what isn't. Look in Taylors general news thread, some dude is suing a priest over saying Jesus existed.

Basically, you can say anything is hatepreaching, you just need to word it properly.

But it's only hate speech if it's hateful.

Like, if an athiest says "There is no god", that's not hate speech. So, when the bible says "There is a god", that's not hate speech either.

Hate speech has more to do with the inTent of the speaker than the interpretations of others.

By your definition, everything is hate speech. I could claim that people saying "Hi" is blasphemous because I don't believe in saying "hi". Does that make "hi" hate speech? No, because the people saying "Hi" aren't saying it with any ill will or hateful intent.