Hate speech laws: yay or nay

[hardcore_gamer]

There is a controversy going on in my country right now as a result of a gay rights group suing a few people over negative comments about their organization. The reason is that gays want/are trying to get the education system to teach certain things about gays at schools (they haven't told exactly what, just that it is about teaching gay tolerance or something).

Anyway, a bunch of people weren't happy about this and wrote on the internet/said in a radio show that they were trying to brainwash kids and that homosexuality was a mental condition. This in return made the gay organization sue them for hate speech and has demanded that they be punished.

However their reaction doesn't have everybody's support with many people now finding themselves disliking the gay organization for trying to react to disagreement (however vile it may be in it's expression) by silencing their critics in this way, with some even saying this will harm the pro-gay group more than the anti-gay one.

What is your view on hate speech laws? Are they an important tool in protecting society from hate or are they just a bad idea?

[Technician]

Hate speech laws: halal or harem

[Clonehunter]

You guys need more Harlem

[RUSH]

Hate speech laws are complete bullshit. Why fix what isn't broken? We don't need any more laws restricting what people can and can't say. It could be far too easy to twist new speech laws in ways that anyone could be considered a criminal. Are we not allowed to voice opinions anymore for fear of being labeled a "hater?" It's nonsense. There always has (and always will) be agreements and disagreements about everything. That's part of life, and if people can't handle that they're being a little bitch.

[Kontra Kommando]

Nobody should go to jail for saying something stupid. I think half world would be locked up.

[Gez]

RUSH said:

Hate speech laws are complete bullshit. Why fix what isn't broken? We don't need any more laws restricting what people can and can't say. It could be far too easy to twist new speech laws in ways that anyone could be considered a criminal.

lol if you think hate speech laws would be used for that, when there are all these intellectual property laws for this exact purpose.

The sentence "why fix what isn't broken" belongs to my client, you must pay a fine of $50000000 or go to jail. Thank you and good night.

[printz]

Public hate speech is instigation to anti-social behaviour, so it has to be limited and/or forbidden.

Luckily it's almost never right to hate whole categories of people, so it's often fair to punish hate-speakers.

[DooMAD]

As with most things, it's more a question of where you draw the line, not whether there should or shouldn't be a line.

[geekmarine]

It's not that I'm not bothered by hate speech, but I hate when bigots feel uncomfortable sharing their views. I don't even like the fact that bigoted speech is generally looked down upon. It means the bigots have to talk in code, to soften their language so that others won't know they're bigots. I like to know where people stand and not have to work out whether they're saying something legitimate or hiding behind some code to disguise their true feelings. There's nothing worse than saying, "You're being a bigot!" only to be met with, "I'm not being a bigot, I didn't explicitly say anything hateful, you're just reading into what I said too much, maybe you're the bigot if that's the interpretation you got!" Gets on my nerves. And what's worse, otherwise perfectly reasonable people get suckered into that crap because it doesn't sound bigoted on the surface. So I'd much rather people just be straightforward in their opinions - if you hate gays, or blacks, or Mexicans, or whatever, just say what you mean, don't try to pretend you have some valid, PC point.

[Gryregaest]

Hate speech laws are utter nonsense. The thing is, even if there were a surefire way to separate what will be defined as "hate speech" and "not hate speech", it still wouldn't be justified.

It's not like differentiating a regular statement from a direct threat. What's defined as sufficiently hateful is a matter of opinion. An opinion that, in this case, would be decided by the state. This essentially gives judges and elected officials the power to stifle unpopular speech.

But let's say you could. So what? Does being "hateful" justify curtailing freedom of speech? What is it that we have to be afraid of from people saying things we don't agree with? That it's going to what, incite people? Hurt people's feelings? Our thoughts are our own, they do not belong to the state.

No matter how you look at it, hate speech laws are an attempt to control thoughts and ideas that are deemed "harmful". They are authoritarian actions in which government vastly oversteps its role and boundaries.

[Maes]

All so-called "liberal" societies are struggling with finding a balance between complete freedom of expression/speech and reasonable restrictions/exceptions to it.

The problem is that any such "enlighted decision" about what should be allowed and what not is always made on a (pretty) slippery slope towards authoritarianism, and if it's not implemented within some solid legal framework with a proven track record of reasonable application, it may lead to petty persecutions, lawsuits abuse or political persecutions.

With non-liberal societies the matter is simpler: ban the gays altogether, and anything the Caudillo/Fuehrer/Generalissimo/Dear Leader/Poglavnik/etc. says is Law, while the other issues I mentioned are already considered dead and buried. But is that what proponents of such laws really want?

[hardcore_gamer]

printz said:

Public hate speech is instigation to anti-social behaviour, so it has to be limited and/or forbidden.

Luckily it's almost never right to hate whole categories of people, so it's often fair to punish hate-speakers.

But what exactly is hateful speech? Is negative speech only hateful if is being used to degrade minorities? What if somebody degrades women and says all women are a bunch of stupid sluts? Is that hate speech also? And what about the anti-capitalist left and their talk about capitalists being the bloodsucking scum of the earth? If a capitalist gets offended and sues them for hate speech would his claim of their speech being hateful be wrong?

When is it ok to hate and when isn't it ok?

Also while we are on the topic of offending people, why are character assassinations banned? If somebody believes that attacks against them aren't warranted, then they can defend themselves with words.

[Snakes]

Let the general populace handle this one. There was nothing more satisfying than watching the fraternity at Oklahoma University get it's comeuppance, but this is one of things that state shouldn't be enforcing. That just sounds like the first step towards 1984.

[printz]

I thought hate speech was already banned. Say anything discriminatory the Nazi would say (for instance) and prepare for lawsuits (more likely to happen if you're a politician or other public person).

[Fulgrim]

Nay, free speech isn't free speech when laws are in place to prevent people from saying something.

[Kontra Kommando]

[hardcore_gamer]

Kontra Kommando said:

video

Isn't Bill Maher more of a libertarian than a liberal? He has often struck me as being more libertarian than liberal, with his dislike of political correctness and rejection of Islam.

[Kontra Kommando]

How about hate speech laws... against the government? The level of how much that would suck, should be apparent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

In addition to being forced to treat the gov't as an infallible holy institution; you would be forced to accept state-sponsored discrimination and xenophobia, or else.

[Kontra Kommando]

hardcore_gamer said:

Isn't Bill Maher more of a libertarian than a liberal? He has often struck me as being more libertarian than liberal, with his dislike of political correctness and rejection of Islam.

I think he certainly liberal on a lot of issues, but he does express libertarian convictions on some; free speech being one of them. Also, I believe he has a libertarian view on drugs. At least when it comes to pot. Also, he does have a stance of Western exceptionalism, despite being isolaitonalist in regards to war. But he is truly liberal in the sense that he believes in government regulation of the private sector, and his stance on how the gov't should handle social issues.

[Antroid]

Nay. People who hate-speak deserve nothing worse than to be hated back. Which they usually will be. Doing anything more serious to punish "hate speech" is ridiculous and stupid. Although sadly it apparently happens all over the place.

[Gez]

hardcore_gamer said:

Isn't Bill Maher more of a libertarian than a liberal? He has often struck me as being more libertarian than liberal, with his dislike of political correctness and rejection of Islam.

How is rejection of Islam a libertarian value? Certainly libertarians should welcome freedom of religion.

Islam and libertarianism would go well with each other; both say that laws of the government are illegitimate. On the other hand, Christianity is completely incompatible with libertarianism.

[Touchdown]

"Hate speech" is a meaningless phrase that certain groups overuse to victimize themselves.

[geekmarine]

From my understanding, Bill Maher used to be more libertarian, but in recent years he's shifted more to the liberal side of things. Or maybe I'm mistaken and he's always been liberal, but yeah, there have definitely been a few major issues on which he's sided in favor of government intervention, even when a libertarian would oppose it. He gets bent out of shape over weed, for example, and to make it clear, I don't blame him, I think making weed illegal is ridiculous myself, while at the same time criticizing the government for not doing anything to help the poor and those in need of health care. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the concept of welfare and whatnot, but that's a clearly liberal idea. A true libertarian would be completely opposed to government intervention to help the poor. I really wouldn't have a problem if he just came out and said, "Hey, I'm a liberal, not a libertarian," but I think he's too worried about losing his "edginess" if he does that, because that's his whole marketing strategy - "I'm edgy, I offend people, both sides hate me, I don't care, look at me!"

I dunno... On the one hand, aside from a few issues like vaccinations and whatnot, I tend to agree with Bill Maher, but on the other hand, I feel like he's misleading people by claiming he's libertarian. If he wants to distance himself from the Democrats, that's fine, but you can't claim to be libertarian while spouting clearly liberal ideals.

[Kontra Kommando]

geekmarine said:

From my understanding, Bill Maher used to be more libertarian, but in recent years he's shifted more to the liberal side of things. Or maybe I'm mistaken and he's always been liberal, but yeah, there have definitely been a few major issues on which he's sided in favor of government intervention, even when a libertarian would oppose it. He gets bent out of shape over weed, for example, and to make it clear, I don't blame him, I think making weed illegal is ridiculous myself, while at the same time criticizing the government for not doing anything to help the poor and those in need of health care. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the concept of welfare and whatnot, but that's a clearly liberal idea. A true libertarian would be completely opposed to government intervention to help the poor. I really wouldn't have a problem if he just came out and said, "Hey, I'm a liberal, not a libertarian," but I think he's too worried about losing his "edginess" if he does that, because that's his whole marketing strategy - "I'm edgy, I offend people, both sides hate me, I don't care, look at me!"

I dunno... On the one hand, aside from a few issues like vaccinations and whatnot, I tend to agree with Bill Maher, but on the other hand, I feel like he's misleading people by claiming he's libertarian. If he wants to distance himself from the Democrats, that's fine, but you can't claim to be libertarian while spouting clearly liberal ideals.

He is certainly critical of the democrats, but he will side with them in elections because he believes them to be the lesser of two evils. He had donated $1,000,000 to Obama's 2012 presidential re-election.

[hardcore_gamer]

Gez said:

How is rejection of Islam a libertarian value? Certainly libertarians should welcome freedom of religion.

The difference between liberals and libertarians is that liberals hate christians while licking the boots of the muslims by constantly coming up with new excuses for why we should not dislike them even though they themselves are constantly hating on other religions as long as it isn't islam, while libertarians are (generally) pretty honest with their "we think ALL religion is dumb" believe. I would also argue that liberals aren't actually in favor of freedom of religion since they scold christians when they say bad things about other people but don't care when muslims do the same.

Saying libertarianism rejects islam is perhaps a bit misleading. I guess what I should have said is that libertarians generally don't try to excuse the muslims for their bullshit like the liberals do.

geekmarine said:

A true libertarian

There is no such thing as a true anything. There are no "true" conservatives, or liberals, or libertarians. It's all just a scale where people are more of this or more of that than they are of something else.

[TMD]

I hate Illinois Nazis.

[Maes]

hardcore_gamer said:

There is no such thing as a true anything. There are no "true" conservatives, or liberals, or libertarians. It's all just a scale where people are more of this or more of that than they are of something else.

What about a psychotic, bible-thumping pentathlete who thinks busting broncos is for pussies and has aced Ranger, Navy Seals, BUD/S training, and is a candidate for Delta Force? He also gets up every morning at 5am to read the Bible and votes for G.W. Bush.

Or, as a more realistic situation, how about a Greek WW II Nazi collaborator and black marketeer, who later also took part in post-war anti-communist crackdowns, and during the 1967-1973 Junta resumed his "work", with the added bonus of "breaking in" dissidents in Military Police jails? Sadly, such individuals existed and some are still alive. I think those are truly full of shit.

[Tarnsman]

hardcore_gamer said:

The difference between liberals and libertarians is that liberals hate christians while licking the boots of the muslims by constantly coming up with new excuses for why we should not dislike them even though they themselves are constantly hating on other religions as long as it isn't islam, while libertarians are (generally) pretty honest with their "we think ALL religion is dumb" believe. I would also argue that liberals aren't actually in favor of freedom of religion since they scold christians when they say bad things about other people but don't care when muslims do the same.

No the difference between Liberals (which is hardly a unified school of thought) and Libertarians is one thinks that the world's problems can be solved with freedom and everything wrong with the world is because the market simply isn't free enough to magically fix everything. The other (in the modern US version) thinks that the world can be solved through the power of magical unicorn farts and banning things they don't like.