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[LazerShark]

FUCK YEAH FREEDOM

 

[Pimpbaa]

Absolutely correct, we should only talk about what we are best at, and that's stealin ur moniez!

No one is stealin my moniez!

 

[Fio]

who makes the call on what's considered free speech/hate speech? 50 years ago I wager a majority would have no problem with saying "god hates fags," and 150 years ago nothing would be considered hate speech against blacks.

it's fucking stupid to ban any speech.

yeah, because every country that imposed limits to hate speech has turned into a dark dictatorship.

 

[Captain Glanton]

who makes the call on what's considered free speech/hate speech? 50 years ago I wager a majority would have no problem with saying "god hates fags," and 150 years ago nothing would be considered hate speech against blacks.

it's fucking stupid to ban any speech.

Great logic. Who's to say when people have a problem with slavery, and when they don't?

 

[JKBii]

I assume those of you who are okay with banning hate speech are also okay with censoring video games so they aren't violent and pornography. I'm not talking about making it so people can't make controversial games or sexual images, just making it illegal to make content that goes beyond the country's moral standards.

 

[Captain Glanton]

I assume those of you who are okay with banning hate speech are also okay with censoring video games so they aren't violent and pornography. I'm not talking about making it so people can't make controversial games or sexual images, just making it illegal to make content that goes beyond the country's moral standards.

I'd be okay with banning a game that plays to the Mel Gibson crowd--where you would dismantle the International Jewish Conspiracy--for example.

 

[WrathOfOtaibah]

"God Hates Fags" is hate speech but nobody takes it seriously.

That is the good thing about freedom of speech. It goes both ways. Fred Phelps can act like an idiot and we can all laugh at him for his idiocy. It would suck if the "God Hates Fags" is considered acceptable and dissent against that view is not.

 

[MisterHero]

I assume those of you who are okay with banning hate speech are also okay with censoring video games so they aren't violent and pornography. I'm not talking about making it so people can't make controversial games or sexual images, just making it illegal to make content that goes beyond the country's moral standards.

I wouldn't want to censor speech. However, I would want to encourage responsibility for what you say and how it can affect others.

 

[SoulPlaya]

I gotta ask out of curiosity, if the magazine was criticizing Christianity, would it still be classified as hate speech.

 

[starchild excalibur]

Great logic. Who's to say when people have a problem with slavery, and when they don't?

I think the point he's trying to say is that anyone who thinks what is considered acceptable and unacceptable remains constant over time is incredibly naive, so why try and establish these hard and fast rules to begin with?

Hate speech is a form of free speech - they're not mutually exclusive. If you disagree with what someone is saying, debate them, ignore them, rebuke them. Just don't pretend that your words have more value or are any more deserving to be heard.

Jesus, I can't believe people are actually debating this.

 

[JKBii]

I'd be okay with banning a game that plays to the Mel Gibson crowd--where you would dismantle the International Jewish Conspiracy--for example.

This isn't banning things you find offensive, this is banning things that the government says society finds is offensive. In this hypothetical you live in neo-America where most people find antisemitism harmless but get extremely offended by nudity so unfortunately society calls you a prude for wanting to ban that game and a sexual predator for wanting to see nudity.

 

[James Power]

Most of these restrictions come from the desire to limit people shouting obvious bullshit or to just plain out lie. In this regard I agree with the idea of limiting free speech to truth. Problem being that it's a very fine line to walk on as who is to decide what is true and what not? Same old story. But seeing the Holocaust and other facts denied I can't help but want to deny these people their right of free speech. Same goes for religious folks as that's not free speech it's simply lying.

 

[MisterHero]

Most of these restrictions come from the desire to limit people shouting obvious bullshit or to just plain out lie. In this regard I agree with the idea of limiting free speech to truth. Problem being that it's a very fine line to walk on as who is to decide what is true and what not? Same old story. But seeing the Holocaust and other facts denied I can't help but want to deny these people their right of free speech. Same goes for religious folks as that's not free speech it's simply lying.

It's funny how people say that the governement shouldn't take away what people might say while worrying what religious[zealots] might say.

 

[Mumei]

It's hate speech... and it ought to be protected.

 

[laserbeam]

yeah, because every country that imposed limits to hate speech has turned into a dark dictatorship.

When it comes to speech many of those countries may as well be. You can get prison time in Several European countries for Nazi related comments

These countries would rather bury what happened and act like it never did then just let life go on and say yeah some really horrible shit happened.

 

[smurfx]

"GOD HATES FAGS" isn't hate speech, it's just a stupid statement. Someone saying: "you should kill homossexuals because they're evil" is. And I think protecting that type of speech is stupid and a disservice to freedom of speech itself.

no the way you think is the biggest disservice to freedom of speech. you can't limit free speech just because somebody thinks it's hate speech.

 

[James Power]

When it comes to speech many of those countries may as well be. You can get prison time in Several European countries for Nazi related comments

These countries would rather bury what happened and act like it never did then just let life go on and say yeah some really horrible shit happened.

So very wrong. There's no country in the world for example than Germany when it comes to admitting and coming to terms with its past.

 

[Odrion]

Well, I guess Bush isn't that horrible.

 

[avatar299]

Is this for real? Are people actually debating this?

If this was china, or any eastern country, would we seriously give this a moment's thought?

 

[nelsonroyale]

Never. Free speech is free speech. That goes for assholes, too.

agreed....but I wonder why quite a lot of US people seem to self sensor..?

 

[Tyrannical]

If you aren't free to hate, then you aren't really free.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

"Hate speech" as a legal construct is as retarded as the construct of "hate crime."

How the hell are they even comparable?

Speech harms no one. Hate crime covers a wide range of criminal activities. From racial slurs spray painted on a wall, to an inbred fuck beating a black guy.

Hate speech is just some half witted moron spouting off. A hate crime is someone perpetrating a crime, with hate for a specific subsection of society. One's illegal, the other just shows someones stupidity.

 

[MisterHero]

I didn't know hateful speech had no corrolation to provoking people into aggression

srsly

 

[B!TCH]

Eh, the United States doesn't really need to limit so called "hate speech" because they have federal hate crime legislation. Even though the United States government may not explicitly try to limit "hate speech" you are still accountable for what you say implicitly. Most people don't really understand the first amendment and what is and isn't protected speech anyway. If they want to believe that the first amendment gives them the freedom to behave like a jackass, let them.

 

[Kettch]

It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Seriously? That's incredibly pathetic. Even though I'm against it, I can at least understand the criminalization of hate speech, as it can often incite people to harm others, but where is the victim in holocaust denial? Emotional trauma because some idiot is insensitive? Do they think denial of Nazi crimes is gonna bring back the gas chambers?

If they're ranting about how the Jewish people are a scourge upon the Earth and need to be wiped out, then fine, charge them if you really have to. But this is just amazing to me. Saying an event never happened doesn't harm anyone.

 

[avatar299]

How the hell are they even comparable?

Speech harms no one. Hate crime covers a wide range of criminal activities. From racial slurs spray painted on a wall, to an inbred fuck beating a black guy.

Hate speech is just some half witted moron spouting off. A hate crime is someone perpetrating a crime, with hate for a specific subsection of society. One's illegal, the other just shows someones stupidity.

The criticism comes into determing what is composed of hate and what isn't. if a white guy kills a black guy, did he do it becuase he is black, or becuase he is just insane, and the black guy was unlucky. Why does race make one crime worse than the other?

 

[Thunder Monkey]

The criticism comes into determing what is composed of hate and what isn't. if a white guy kills a black guy, did he do it becuase he is black, or becuase he is just insane, and the black guy was unlucky. Why does race make one crime worse than the other?

Because of this countries tainted history that many try to ignore.

A hate crime should be any crime that is racially or orientation motivated. Whether the victim is Jewish, black, white, Hispanic, or gay. Whatever.

And as many Repubs like to say, we need to make a lesson of those that follow their hate, to stop others from doing the same. I think it's quite funny to send a bigot into prison for killing a person of another race. Since the majority of those on his block will likely be of another race.

 

[B!TCH]

I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. There are very, very stringent limitations on the government's ability to limit free speech, and "hate crimes" are not speech in even the remotest sense of the word, unless you consider hurting & intimidating people a form of speech.

WTF? Where did I say hate crimes were speech?

Read what I posted again.

 

[FightyF]

There's a subtle difference between regulating a private server via bans, and imprisoning people.

You weren't wishing death on people who punish hate speech differently, you were wishing death on people who don't think that hate speech is a right.

It's not hypocritical. If you are the victim of libel you can point to a specific way you were substantially harmed by incorrect information, and it has to be harmful because people believe it, not because you don't agree with it. If somebody says your race is stupider than other races, that will not cause you to lose friends or a job, but if someone says you support NAMBLA, this could happen.

What if they say your race supports NAMBLA?

Take a look at oppressed minority groups (that are, to some extent, still subjugated to ill-treatment today) such as Blacks and Jews. For a while, they simply didn't have a voice, fair representation in the media, or a way to respond to ridiculous allegations against them. It took a lot of time (or an international conflict and a tragedy) for people to realize how harmful such speech was. It directly affected their rights and status in their respective societies. I'm not talking about one Black man or one Jewish man who was affected, I'm talking about an entire population of people.

There is no right to not be offended in America and there shouldn't be one anywhere else. Some people take insults about their favorite comic book hero more seriously than others take insults about their race, so it's not even possible to quantify damages caused by being offended.

This has nothing to do with being offended. This has to do with having false claims applied to you, which as a result marginalizes your standards of living.

Corporations and individuals get more protection from libel because there is a single entity with a uniform voice being harmed and it is easy to find out whether a statement about it is true or not.

The same applies to groups of people. The claims that Blacks were inferior to Whites, or that Jews are all loan sharks, or that all Muslims are supportive of radical terrorists, are easy to dismiss and false.

I assume those of you who are okay with banning hate speech are also okay with censoring video games so they aren't violent and pornography. I'm not talking about making it so people can't make controversial games or sexual images, just making it illegal to make content that goes beyond the country's moral standards.

How does violent videogames affect my standard of living?

I gotta ask out of curiosity, if the magazine was criticizing Christianity, would it still be classified as hate speech.

That question has no relevance...the magazine wasn't criticizing Islam.

I think the point he's trying to say is that anyone who thinks what is considered acceptable and unacceptable remains constant over time is incredibly naive, so why try and establish these hard and fast rules to begin with?

Hate speech is a form of free speech - they're not mutually exclusive. If you disagree with what someone is saying, debate them, ignore them, rebuke them. Just don't pretend that your words have more value or are any more deserving to be heard.

The problem is that there is no forum for debate. Macleans refused to print an article that would respond to Mark Steyn's and all the other allegations (remember, Mark Steyn's article was the most recent of a string of "Muslims are destroying the West from within" articles, when the respondents wanted equal coverage. So debate is non-existent here, and if it were to have occurred, it would have been marginalized.

Jesus, I can't believe people are actually debating this.

So you're telling me that libel and slander should be accepted?

You guys are tossing around the word "hate" when that isn't the issue.

The issue is making incorrect claims about people, and the result is that it affects their rights and standards of living.

There were claims that Blacks were inferior, despite common sense telling us that we're all human. Blacks couldn't respond and thus the results were a population of people that were treated as second class citizens in all respects.

There were claims that Jews were all loan sharks, controlling the financial well being of everyone. Jews couldn't respond to this Nazi party rhetoric spewed via the media and as a result a massive backlash in Nazi Germany occurred.

Now we're seeing claims that "Muslims are destroying the West from within" in a large number of articles from Macleans magazine and Muslims can't respond to it (as Macleans and other newspapers have refused to print op-eds by Muslims on the issue, and as they are a tiny segment of Western population) so what's going to happen to Muslims in Canada? 9/11 already made it harder for Muslims to get jobs, ramped up hate crimes, put them under government surveillance, prone to mistreatment from governmental services, etc.

"Hate" is a byproduct of infactual speech. Being "offended" by libelous remarks is a byproduct of that speech. You are misrepresenting the issue when you focus on those words. The issue here is the dishonest villifying of a population of people, and the negative affect it has on their lives as a result. You can falsely vilify a person, and affect his well-being, and that is considered a crime. You can falsely vilify a company, and affect their well-being, and that is considered a crime. I find it extremely hypocritical if you can agree with these and not see how the defamation of a group of people through false claims, should be considered as something we don't want in our society.

 

[Shockgamer]

You Tube, Image boards and X-Box Live thank you.

 

[B!TCH]

Perhaps I misconstrued this: But it sounded to me like you were saying that hate crime legislation was a substitute for hate speech laws, or something. I'm not sure I get the implicit/explicit distinction, unless, again, you mean to say that hate crime legislation governs your speech.

But I'm tired, and I'm probably misreading your post, so you can just ignore me if you like. :lol

Nah, I'm not saying hate crime legislation is a substitute for laws against "hate speech" because hate crime legislation doesn't prevent or limit "hate speech" from occurring in the first place, but hate crime legislation does help protect those who might feel threatened by "hate speech" by sending the message that acts of violence or intimidation against said group will not be tolerated.

 

[starchild excalibur]

So you're telling me that libel and slander should be accepted?

You guys are tossing around the word "hate" when that isn't the issue.

The issue is making incorrect claims about people, and the result is that it affects their rights and standards of living.

There were claims that Blacks were inferior, despite common sense telling us that we're all human. Blacks couldn't respond and thus the results were a population of people that were treated as second class citizens in all respects.

There were claims that Jews were all loan sharks, controlling the financial well being of everyone. Jews couldn't respond to this Nazi party rhetoric spewed via the media and as a result a massive backlash in Nazi Germany occurred.

Now we're seeing claims that "Muslims are destroying the West from within" in a large number of articles from Macleans magazine and Muslims can't respond to it (as Macleans and other newspapers have refused to print op-eds by Muslims on the issue, and as they are a tiny segment of Western population) so what's going to happen to Muslims in Canada? 9/11 already made it harder for Muslims to get jobs, ramped up hate crimes, put them under government surveillance, prone to mistreatment from governmental services, etc.

I understand your point, but still think that most people can spot the difference between a piece of libel and an overblown editorial that's predicated on the assumption that large groups of people uniformly participate in activities. You're vastly under-estimating the influence that today's technology has in providing avenues for dissent. And unless specific claims are being made towards specific people, it's hard to claim that almost any type of speech is libel unless you can prove that the entire population being referred to doesn't participate in any of the aforementioned acts.

The world isn't so one dimensional anymore and we have the beauty of hindsight to realize when things are starting to boil over. Much of the anti-middle eastern sentiment resulted after 9/11 not because there were a multitude of bloggers calling people from the region evil, but because there was rampant ignorance about why those particular middle easterners decided to do what they did.

In this world of 24 hour news, internet access, blogs, and other avenues for speech to be heard, i just find it questionable to say that there's no forum for debate. Now whether or not some people are willing to explore those other forums are another thing, but the latter issue is something that can be applied from just about everything - from religious views to global warming.

 

[JayDubya]

How the hell are they even comparable?

Speech harms no one. Hate crime covers a wide range of criminal activities. From racial slurs spray painted on a wall, to an inbred fuck beating a black guy.

Hate speech is just some half witted moron spouting off. A hate crime is someone perpetrating a crime, with hate for a specific subsection of society. One's illegal, the other just shows someones stupidity.

Spraypainting whatever or beating anyone like that is illegal regardless.

You're taking a regular crime, an unwarranted act of aggression against the rights of another - so in short, something bad, that carries a given sentence - and you're making a special exception that makes it now extra bad and extending the sentence because of the motivation for the action. What goddamn difference does it make if the axe murderer hates the color of your skin or just wants your shoes? Either way, the intent is there, as the action is no accident, so the only difference is the motive.

So in effect, "hate crime" legislation is the criminalization of motive.

Seems very, very comparable to me.

 

[Outcast2004]

Never. Free speech is free speech. That goes for assholes, too.

Exactly. It's the very foundation of our nation. You take that away, you kill democracy.

Changing free speech or fragmenting it also changes quite a few other laws ted directly to that.

 

[worldrunover]

Hmmmm you guys didn't seem to be all free-speechy when it came to that family that protested military funerals. Or the teaching of creationism in schools.

Just making observations...

 

[Tieno]

What about how the 'free market' in the US produces self-censure and limits free speech? you know with the monopolization of press and media.

Maybe I need another injection of freedom.

 

[eznark]

What about how the 'free market' in the US produces self-censure and limits free speech? you know with the monopolization of press and media.

that's not limiting free speech, it's potentially limiting the mass dissemination of free speech, two very different things.

 

[Xdrive05]

Free speech HAS to mean the freedom to voice unpopular opinions or it's not free speech. And you don't have a right to not be offended.

Also, consider that it wasn't hate speech laws that put the KKK in their place.

 

[pizzaguysrevenge]

Hmmmm you guys didn't seem to be all free-speechy when it came to that family that protested military funerals. Or the teaching of creationism in schools.

Just making observations...

Government money supporting creationism violates separation of church and state. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

 

[Outcast2004]

Hmmmm you guys didn't seem to be all free-speechy when it came to that family that protested military funerals. Or the teaching of creationism in schools.

Just making observations...

There's a difference between committing harrassment and protesting.

They weren't even protesting the funeral, they targeted the funeral because it was a military man and disrupted the service and harrassed the family.

(And due to free speech, I can say that little church needs to be nuked off the face of the Earth. How they make he bullshit conclusion of military death = God hates gays is beyond me.)

 

[GaimeGuy]

Israel forbids the sale of swastikas and Nazi flags?!

I know, crazy, isn't it? :O

 

[Yaweee]

You weren't wishing death on people who punish hate speech differently, you were wishing death on people who don't think that hate speech is a right.

I think it was pretty clear that I was referring to anyone that is trying to get THE GOVERNMENT to remove freedom of speech.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Hmmmm you guys didn't seem to be all free-speechy when it came to that family that protested military funerals. Or the teaching of creationism in schools.

Just making observations...

Creationism in schools is not about someone expressing their right to an opinion, it's about teaching students something other than what they're supposed to be taught in those classes: science.

As for idiots like Westboro picketing funerals, that's a much more debatable subject. It's one place where I would argue that freedom of speech runs into limitations, and "talk" can become a form of legitimate hate crime. Assembling in a public place to protest with hateful speech is one thing. Assembling around a group of emotionally distressed people to hate on and goad them, while those people are at a private function, is something else. Ethically, I would liken it a little bit to yelling "fire!" in a crowded movie theater.

 

[eznark]

Creationism in schools is not about someone expressing their right to an opinion, it's about teaching students something other than what they're supposed to be taught in those classes: science.

As for idiots like Westboro picketing funerals, that's a much more debatable subject. It's one place where I would argue that freedom of speech runs into limitations, and "talk" can become a form of legitimate hate crime. Assembling in a public place to protest with hateful speech is one thing. Assembling around a group of emotionally distressed people to hate on and goad them, while those people are at a private function, is something else. Ethically, I would liken it a little bit to yelling "fire!" in a crowded movie theater.

I guess I don't see the incredible harm in teaching creationism along with evolution. Seems like science is supposed to be the search for truth, so picking one theory and disregarding all else seems like shitty science.

Of course, Keynes is taught as immutable fact in school as well, so I suppose it's just easier to be doctrinaire.

A simple solution would be to end all public funding for schools.

 

[seanoff]

I guess I don't see the incredible harm in teaching creationism along with evolution. Seems like science is supposed to be the search for truth, so picking one theory and disregarding all else seems like shitty science.

Of course, Keynes is taught as immutable fact in school as well, so I suppose it's just easier to be doctrinaire.

A simple solution would be to end all public funding for schools.

"A scientific theory is an established and experimentally verified fact or collection of facts about the world. Unlike the everyday use of the word theory, it is not an unproved idea, or just some theoretical speculation. The latter meaning of a 'theory' in science is called a hypothesis."

teaching creationism is teaching something that is as far removed from scientific theory as my daughters belief in Santa Claus.



on topic - in Australia if a muslim gets on the radio or tv and calls christians devils and promotes violence against them, yes, they face the same legal consequences as anybody else doing the same thing.

 

[Yaweee]

I guess I don't see the incredible harm in teaching creationism along with evolution. Seems like science is supposed to be the search for truth, so picking one theory and disregarding all else seems like shitty science.

Of course, Keynes is taught as immutable fact in school as well, so I suppose it's just easier to be doctrinaire.

A simple solution would be to end all public funding for schools.

Creationism is not science, as it exists in a happy little realm where evidence and experiment are null and void. It is non-falsifiable, making belief in it completely unjustifiable.

 

[datruth29]

I guess I don't see the incredible harm in teaching creationism along with evolution. Seems like science is supposed to be the search for truth, so picking one theory and disregarding all else seems like shitty science.

Of course, Keynes is taught as immutable fact in school as well, so I suppose it's just easier to be doctrinaire.

A simple solution would be to end all public funding for schools.

Creationism is more of a topic for philosophy or theology study. It has no purpose being taught in a science class because 1) it doesn't fit the criteria of being a science in that it's not falsifiable and hence unarguable and 2) frankly, it's just not practical for teaching purposes. What can you possibly get out of "God did it". That doesn't help you cure diseases, study bacteria, map the human genome, etc.

 

[Chairman Yang]

You're trying to change the subject here, but I'll bite...

I'm trying to refocus on the original subject of this thread.

No. Why should they? They don't agree with Islam's view on homosexuality...sure go ahead and talk about it. Think Islam's perspective on the abortion issue is incorrect, talk about it.

But if Muslims should be protected against having false concepts attributed to them. Such as any person, or even corporation, is protected in the same manner.

Who decides what concepts are "false" or not? If I think Islam has an evil policy towards apostates, and some random imam disagrees, does that mean I've attributed false concepts towards Islam?

The problem is that there is no one "Islam", and no clear definition of "Muslim".

Mark Steyn's article wasn't a commentary on Islam, or a critical analysis of it. It made a handful of generalizations about western Muslims without any evidence to support it. It painted a hypothetical situation that was unrealistic (ie. Muslims in the West would change voting demographics so that our Western governments are friendly towards radicals).

My apologies...I'll have to read the article before I can comment on this. I'll get back to this eventually.

Again, you're ignoring my point about slander and libel. I think it's because you KNOW there's a double standard being applied here. That while individuals and corporations are protected from such speech, you don't want to see the same applied to minority groups.

That's correct. I DON'T think minority groups should be protected. I think individuals should be protected. Why should there be protection for groups over and above the protection for individuals within those groups?

That's because a "minority group" is an artificial, arbitrary, and sometimes incoherent construct with a tenuous grounding in reality. If a particular Muslim has been directly harmed by particular speech, fine, that Muslim should have legal recourse, IF that speech is presented as fact and not opinion, and IF the speech is false, and IF the speech is not made with a reasonable belief that it is true, and IF there is actual harm, and if a whole slew of other conditions are met.

Of course, that's not what's happening here.

 

[mugwhump]

Man, sorry Canada, I can't side with my homeland on this one.

 

[cashman]

Wait..so now you're religious and are going to stop posting? That's quite the turnaround...

On a serious note as a Christan I take plenty of heat on GAF. People think that I'm stupid and misguided and don't mind saying that in the rudest ways. That being said I'd never in a million years want to legally restrict their rights to say those things. You start to restrict speech in any area and goodness knows what is next.

But the world is only 6,000 years old amrite?

Spoiler

I'm sorry, I just had to :/