"Hate speech" has specific functional meanings when it comes to legal jurisdictions in which it applies. The idea that it's a tool for arbitrary suppression of disagreement is approximately correct as the idea that any other limitation on free speech (libel, slander, fire in a crowded theater, verbal assault, time place manner, etc) can be used arbitrarily -- which is to say, generally incorrect, although interpretation and application of the law matters (libel or time place manner judgments have been used to mute speech).
Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.
Private companies: not that different in the fundamentals, but there are additional issues that lean towards both the right of ownership to speak and restrict speech that comes through them. You likely wouldn't want anyone to force you to repeat ideas you believe are incorrect, or contrary to key personal interests even where narrowly correct, or even lead to effects you find personally undesirable. If freedom of speech means anything, it has to include some measure of judgment about what your personal faculties are used to express, and to some more moderated extent what/how your property is used. There may be balancing concerns in the latter case, but whether we're at that point is another issue. Again, I can think of very little in the realm of valuable discourse that's been walled off here; if there's anything at all, I suspect the relevant mechanism is essentially social values that are held widely enough that contrary expressions bring social consequences, and while you can create some spaces for robust contrary discussion ("safe spaces", if you like), you can't eliminate the kickback from broad social consequences without treading more heavily on other liberties of equal or greater importance to speech.
Honestly, if there's any issue at all here, it's that there has never been an EASIER time to express ideas -- even very unpopular ones -- quite widely, and it's the way that these ideas carry widely that's leading to a level of tension that people are still figuring out how to manage.
And really, this is the weaponization issues: 50 years ago, authoritarian countries didn't have the capabilities of broadcasting ideas or disinformation into your average household, much less an individual handheld device. A world-of-ends internet means that they do.
>"Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED."
The definition of "reasonable discourse" is the problem here. I'd reckon a good chunk of people don't see problems with "hate speech" censorship because they only see them applied to things that they don't seem to be reasonable discourse, so "why not". Then again, the general internet is a cesspool a lot of the time anyway and "reasonable discourse" is quite often very bad-sounding, nasty and personal.
The other side of it is that "hate speech" is not being applied legally at all. Platforms are using some sort of nebulous definition of it and a few other semi-related concepts in order to appease to offended people (from the perspective of the people it's being applied to). This is what a lot of the people are fighting back against, they're not fighting against "legal censorship for the legal definition of hate speech", which practically never happens anymore in the west.
On a side note now that I think about it, you could argue what's going on in the UK, Germany & South Africa among other places as being examples of reasonable criticism & discourse online being silenced under hate-speech laws. And some people even going to jail over some of it. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
Yes, the laws are phrased in "feel-good" ways such that at the surface it looks like they're just there to prevent bad things like "inciting racial hatred/violence", etc. But the way they get applied is not exactly that because it's open to interpretation and attempts to legislate offense and feelings which are very grey-terms. Also, these laws get "cited" by various platforms in pro-active justifications for why they remove/de-platform individuals on them, without legal or criminal proceedings ever actually taking place.
>Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.
Now that paraphilias have been removed from the DSM and are no longer considered a mental illness, the idea that they need an acceptance and support group (of course, acting on them in a way that harms someone is still unacceptable). This has been taken to be hate speech against sexual minorities that were removed from even earlier editions of the DSM.
There is also some evidence that having some level of social acceptance results in less anti-social behavior including hurting other people (I think Germany has begun to incorporate this in therapy programs).
Upvoted because I think you're the first response indicating an understanding of the challenge: the prospect of walling off discourse regarding support groups for a paraphilia may plausibly be a loss (vs, say, what might be lost if the freedom to train a dog to perform nazi signifiers is limited).
OTOH, it's an example I'm skeptical is functioning as a loss, because it's as easy to construct the idea of such groups as affinity gatherings as it is to construct them as remediation meetings. As far as I can tell from secondhand familiarity with, say, BDSM-involved folks (which I'd assume is a reasonable parallel for most paraphilias and maybe even an example of something DSM-demoted), there's never been a better time to find other similar people for communal discussion and exploration of what it means to live ethically and well in that way.
Are there concrete examples of related legal trouble for people? If so, are they from people incorrectly construing affinity gatherings as remediation meetings, or are they from people suggesting that remediation should be the primary purpose of gathering paraphilia'd people together?
If there are speech-related restrictions, I assume we're talking about a context outside the US. Here AFAICT it would be quite legal to discuss support groups as outright reform efforts (and in many jurisdictions actually run such support groups as ostensibly legitimate therapy).
In general I have not seen any legal trouble or even social consequences falling on people, but that is because I've never seen anyone even attempt such a discussion without the veil of anonymity (be it advocating for themselves or advocating for others).
As for laws, the US generally has few legal consequences but the social consequences are so assumed it is like finding people who can confirm jumping off a bridge hurts you. It is taken as such an absolute truth that most do not know someone who has tested the premise.
For other countries with far stricter laws on speech, I do not know of many examples but have rarely searched. I do remember there being a related case involving a claim concerning the prophet Muhammad. But at the same time, I want to acknowledge while I raise this issue for general discussion, I have personally seen many use similar arguments only as weapons against minority groups. Thus the challenge of someone using an argument as weapon against minorities vs. someone who uses an argument as a means to increase tolerance.
> "Hate speech" has specific functional meanings when it comes to legal jurisdictions in which it applies. The idea that it's a tool for arbitrary suppression of disagreement is approximately correct as the idea that any other limitation on free speech (libel, slander, fire in a crowded theater, verbal assault, time place manner, etc) can be used arbitrarily
As I understand it (could be wrong), hate crime/speech regulations only actually act as punishment modifiers for existing crimes. They don't criminalize otherwise legal acts or speech (in the US, at least).
For example, it's illegal to vandalize a synagogue with spray paint. Hate crime/speech laws generally might mean that a person who spray paints an immature, lewd picture/message on a synagogue, is treated differently that a person who spray paints a swastika. The latter would be treated more harshly - which seems reasonable to me.
I think only if there's a direct threat of violence. It could be argued that a swastika on a synagogue is a threat of violence but it'd be on a case by case basis for those edge cases. A kid doing it for giggles is different to a violent gang doing it
That would be hate crimes, not hate speech, which are different legally speaking (though in common parlance we use them interchangeably).
Hate speech from my own understanding legally is relatively narrowly defined (in the US) for direct calls of violence that can reasonably be interpreted to incite action. Eg "Kill Hitler!" isn't hate speech, but inducing someone to assassinate a particular person would be.
The issue is that platforms and some countries often use an expansive definition which is frequently weaponized against "the other side" (whomever that might be). The case which got JK Rowling on twitter's angry side, the Maya Forstater case, is an example of non-citing speech which had legal consequences.
Now I would not exactly consider this an "important idea". But arresting and convicting someone for that is egregious and, dare I say, offensive.
At the same time, I could not possibly care less which ideas _you_ consider important or not. Or anyone for that matter. That's the whole point of free speech.
> Citing your ignorance of events is not a compelling argument.
If you're going to make a case that there are harms from imposition on speech, then you need to be able to point to harms. An absence of demonstrable harms does not necessarily constitute ignorance on my part (though demonstrable harms might, although the good news for me is that can be easily remedied).
> Now I would not exactly consider this an "important idea". But arresting and convicting someone for that is egregious and, dare I say, offensive.
Your objection here is apparently to either the fact that the law was enforced, or to the specific punishment. I assume it's not the former, or laws protecting speech don't matter either. There's legitimate room for discussion of the later, but all conversations about what constitutes a reasonable consequence for violating the law are distinct from whether it's reasonable to have a law regarding any specific activity in the first place. And it's worth pointing out that there are other forms of speech such as fraud and perjury that can result in prison time.
> I could not possibly care less which ideas _you_ consider important or not. Or anyone for that matter. That's the whole point of free speech.
Actually the whole point of free speech is that ideas matter. Broad allowances aren't the primary value; the search for value in discourse is. Where broad allowances exist they flow from that central point.
When you understand that, it's easier to see why even societies which hold free speech as a high value do not consider every form of expression equally valuable, and why exceptions to allowances exist both by informal social construction and in legal formalisms. Including those that distinguish even crude expressions like "The Prime Minister is an Asshole" from slurs, or the idea that freedom is for teaching animals to pass on Nazi signifiers.
Do some research on how the law is being used for. On what people are being arrested for. I look forward to your report.
> Your objection here is apparently to either the fact that the law was enforced, or to the specific punishment.
My objection is to the existence of the law. Not only should there have been no punishment but there shouldn’t have been an arrest or even an investigation.
> Right. That’s why I included articles on people being arrested. Being arrested is very much a harm.
The mere existence of an arrest or the general fact of any legal consequence does not demonstrate that a law is harmful.
Presumably you don't believe that being arrested for theft is a demonstration about how property law harms people. Presumably you don't believe that punishments for perjury would demonstrates how some legal obligations to speak truthfully constitute harm.
This is a conversation about the value of free speech and the contention that hate speech laws have eroded that value. If there's a case for that, it has to be demonstrated with examples of meaningful discourse that has been barred or otherwise suffered.
How do you propose somebody demonstrate that something did not happen because of hate speech restrictions? It is very difficult to prove a negative. What we can do is reason over the situations that have cropped up. Do you think it's a net benefit to society that a teenager was arrested and had to wear an ankle bracelet for posting lyrics of a song on Instagram in remembrance of someone that was killed? Because I don't think that's good for society. I think that she's now much less likely to speak her mind on the future, because she has essentially already been punished for doing that in the past.
>Presumably you don't believe that being arrested for theft is a demonstration about how property law harms people.
Theft is demonstrably bad for society and it is generally easy to separate theft from non-theft. Therefore punishing theft is a net good for society, because we want to discourage theft.
I've not seen someone demonstrate that hate speech is bad for society. Furthermore, hate speech is not easy to separate from regular speech. This means that if you discourage hate speech you'll likely discourage some regular speech as well.
You haven't demonstrated why theft is bad for society though? If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, is that bad for society simply by virtue of theft being seen as generally wrong?
You really can't see how hate speech is bad for society? You don't think calling minorities racial slurs affects society negatively? The difficulty of separating it from "regular speech" or satire really isn't important for there to be laws against it, that is why there are courts and judges and juries to settle cases and set precedents.
I also think you're highly overestimating how easy it is to separate theft from non-theft. Again, not that the complexity in separating a crime from a non-crime should in any way be a deciding factor in whether a law against said crime exists.
>If Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, is that bad for society simply by virtue of theft being seen as generally wrong?
It is. Theft causes harm to society because it deprives property from somebody that legally owns it. Humans can't survive without property in nature, which means that theft harms their survival. Furthermore, rampant theft in society means that individuals will spend a lot of effort on securing their property, effort that could've been used for better effect. Hate speech, on the other hand, is about being offended. Offense is taken, not given. Remember that speech that intimidates or harasses is already illegal and not part of hate speech laws.
>that is why there are courts and judges and juries to settle cases and set precedents.
This is still punishing. I imagine that most of us on this site agree that copyright law is not in a good spot right now, because justice is often only had when you spend a lot of money defending yourself. Courts, judges, and juries do not seem to make the process fair. And I believe many feel the same thing about hate speech laws in the UK, where a teenager was arrested and had to wear an ankle bracelet for quoting song lyrics on Instagram.
This is a loaded statement. Humans can absolutely survive without property, they did so for hundreds of thousands of years before the concept of property was defined.
What is speech that harasses covered under, if not hate speech? I would argue that the only reason why hate speech came into being was because so many harmful remarks didn't qualify as harassment in the same courts you question the fairness of.
Let me be clear and say that I don't doubt that any of these things are tough to define once you really start looking at possible edge cases. My problem with your statements are more about how you think things are black and white, but hate speech is all grey. If I sing lyrics of a very violent song directly at a passer-by in the street, is that not threatening? Do you think that action should fall under harassment?
> Courts, judges, and juries do not seem to make the process fair.
If you don't trust courts, judges and juries (and I'm not saying I do), then you really can't rely on them, nor politicians, either to define what is lawful and what is not, and that includes theft, murder or whatever other offenses.
There's no such thing as hate speech. You have the right to hate, and expressing it helps. It's often the things you hate that need to be talked about the most. You shouldn't be scared to say it, it should be encouraged, especially if you are wrong.
I too am alarmed by these spooky disinformation campaigns.
I just googled "what party was abraham lincoln in" and a big box popped up at the top saying "National Union Party". I've never even heard of this party. I assume its a euphemism sinister people use like "Democratic People's Republic".
Wikipedia: Abraham Lincoln started out as a Whig Party leader in 1834. He left politics in 1849, and reentered it in 1854 as leader for the newly rename republican party created the same year.
In 1864 during the civil war both republicans and democrats had internal conflicts about leadership and the war. In order to create a majority, those republicans loyal to Lincoln decided to create a new party name in order to form a collation with pro-war democrats. The new party name got called the National Union Party.
Lincoln died the next tear in 1865. The next year after, in 1866, the new National Union Party leader failed to maintain the coalition and Republican members left, with the remaining democrats leaving short after.
"what party was abraham lincoln in" is thus a question about time. He was party leader under three different party names, president under two, and leader of one coalition that spanned between two parties. He spent 15 years as a Whig, 10 years under the republican name and 1 year under the coalition which is the point of his death.
He spent only 2 years as a Whig before exiting politics. He returned as a Republican until his assassination over a decade later. (Granted, by sleight of hand he did change the name of his Republican party for a year. Perhaps the trickery of his contemporary enemies here is payback for these tactics.)
Upon expanding the answer, this is the explanation I saw.
"The National Union Party was the temporary name used by the Republican Party for the national ticket in the 1864 presidential election that was held during the Civil War."
Since Lincoln's final election victory as President was under their ticket, it's not a crazy answer to give. It's not the answer one expects (I had never heard of it until now) but it seems to be technically correct.
I once had sex with a married woman. When her husband found out she had met up with me, she assured him that she "didn't even kiss" me, which was true (I refused this particular intimacy but enjoyed many others). Was she lying to him? If not, why did he become so viciously angry when I told him what had happened plainly?
Is this sarcasm? Lincoln was in the National Union Party during the civil war since he wanted to keep the Union together. It was a temporary 'rebranding' of the Republican party for the Presidential Election to attract members who wouldn't take the Republican name but were sympathetic to the Union.
He was elected initially as a republican and was a republican for much longer than he was in the "National Union Party" - I think the result from google is clearly deceptive.
Are people honestly insinuating that Google's algorithm is hiding the party of Abe Lincoln as some sort of slight against modern Republicans? What in the world... how could anyone believe that?
Is that bizarre conspiracy theory more likely or that their search results scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?
Is it a persecution complex when many of these kinds of "technical errors" seem to so often befall people from one political persuasion? Some of them clearly weren't errors and that has happened enough that people stop believing that it's just an error, because these companies have demonstrated in the past that they don't mind doing moves such as that.
Yes. The fact that the OP had never heard of the National Union Party and jumped immediately to the conclusion that is was a 'euphemism sinister people use' rather than spend 30 seconds confirming that this was in fact the name of the party he represented as President at the time of his death is ample evidence of a persecution complex. Propensity to assume one's own ignorance of facts is evidence of malfeasance on the part of one's opponents is pretty much the definition of persecution complex.
I was being facetious; it appears it is your theory of mind which is lacking. Of course, this is no grave fault of yours. Noticing these subtle tricks takes special acuity. After a few dozen more Google queries and even examination of several different platforms entirely, the picture becomes much clearer.
> search results scrape Wikipedia and return the most recent party a politician belonged to?
Google for: "what party was Andrew Jackson in"
For me this shows "Democratic-Republican Party" - this was the first party he was part of - he was elected president while a member of the Democratic party and remained such until his death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson
So your theory does not hold.
Here we have someone who was a Republican being portrayed as something else and someone who was a Democrat being portrayed as something else - and in both cases there is political benefit to Democratic party in the US.
It's literally the same party. Policy has evolved for this dramatically different world, but its ideological foundations are still closer to its heritage than any real alternative.
> Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.
So you believe it’s fine for any expression that doesn’t fit in with whatever it is that you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” to be a criminal offence? A vast majority of the worlds population is religious, and most religious texts contain “hate speech”. Arresting and prosecuting people for expressing their religious beliefs has happened numerous times. There are also many political and moral issues where the views of one side are simply declared hate speech. Many people have been arrested and prosecuted for such views. A lot of the most ridiculous cases get thrown out, but not before somebody is arrested, potentially spends several days incarcerated, potentially loses their job, potentially loses future employment opportunities, and would have to pay thousands of dollars for lawyers.
Whatever it is that you, or I, or anybody else considers to be “reasonable discourse” should be completely irrelevant in the eyes of the law. You either believe that views you consider to be offensive, or vulgar, or obscene should be protected, or you believe that all views falling outside the political orthodoxy should be oppressed. Not only is this tyrannical, but it’s completely stupid. If your views happen to fall within the political orthodoxy today, that’s merely a coincidence, and you can guarantee that at some point in the future, they won’t.
> So you believe it’s fine for any expression that doesn’t fit in with whatever it is that you perceive to be “reasonable discourse” to be a criminal offence?
"Any expression?" Way to strawman.
There are broad areas of expression that should remain entirely open. There are perhaps some that are borderline but nevertheless deserve respect or at least spaces in which they can be examined. None of that keeps us from identifying categories of speech that are broadly recognizable as outside reasonable discourse, several of which beyond hate speech I identified in my comment above should you want to engage this topic thoughtfully.
I didn’t strawman you at all. Your stated rationalization is that such laws are fine because they do not impact whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse”. I’ve stated the very immediate dangers of criminalizing unreasonable discourse above. Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society, I can’t imagine why anybody would have so much contempt for it.
>The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech is only one of several avenues available for this.
The parent poster brought up a pretty important example:
>Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society, I can’t imagine why anybody would have so much contempt for it.
If you need even more concrete, then how's this: the civil rights movement could've easily been classified as "hate speech" and legally squashed because it was unpopular when it started. Talk about gay marriage could've been legally squashed, because is was unpopular when the discussion started.
Do you really believe that we have the world so well figured out that there will never be anything controversial in the future that will be unpopular at first? Because if you don't, then hate speech laws are going to be used against those ideas.
If you need even more concrete, then how's this: the civil rights movement could've easily been classified as "hate speech" and legally squashed because it was unpopular when it started.
That is not a concrete example it is a hypothetical, furthermore civil rights activist were literally beaten in the streets for their speech and subject to extrajudicial punishment on many occassions - far worse than the current "hate speech" laws that are afforded due process.
The point is that there would be additional ways to stop their speech through legal means.
>Just give a concrete example, do it!
As said elsewhere: you can't prove a negative. Asking for concrete examples on this topic is like asking for a concrete example about an epidemic that a food safety law prevented. You wouldn't claim that we don't need food safety laws just because you couldn't give us concrete examples of epidemics that were prevented due to that food safety law, would you?
Hate speech laws vary widely from country to country (from none to strict), but I thought the Wikipedia two-sentence summary sounded reasonable:
"The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group, or which disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify a group based on certain characteristics."
I'd like to know what kinds of societal discourse is being held back when there are laws prohibiting disparagement or intimidation of people based on their membership in a group.
What are we missing out on, that hate speech laws as described are prohibiting?
I don't believe gay rights activism could in any way fall under that, or any other kinds of pro-civil rights activism, as has been mentioned elsewhere. None of those are focused on disparagement or intimidation, but the opposite: freedom from disparagement or intimidation.
> I'd like to know what kinds of societal discourse is being held back when there are laws prohibiting disparagement or intimidation of people based on their membership in a group
This depends highly on what is being included under the umbrella of "disparagement of intimidation". Some claimed that James Damore's memo was disparagement, and others say that advocating against men who identity as women competing in women's sporting events is disparagement. Others try to put advocating for enforcement of existing immigration laws as disparagement and intimidation.
Once you define a forbidden category, people will try to abuse it to their advantage.
What you're missing is that you're reading a generic summary of laws that are twisted and abused. Elsewhere in the thread an article was posted about a teenager that was arrested and had to wear an ankle bracelet because she quoted rap lyrics in remembrance of another dead teenager. I believe you'll agree that Snap Dogg's lyrics aren't really many to be focused on disparagement or intimidation either. Yet these hate speech laws were used to punish a teenager.[0]
Just look at how the "fake news" label has been abused in the past. You could read a summary on Wikipedia about what it is:
>Fake news is a form of news consisting of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media (print and broadcast) or online social media.
This description makes it sound like limiting fake news is a good thing, because it combats disinformation campaigns. Yet that same rhetoric was used by nazis to justify their censorship, which they used to cover to their atrocities.
I do agree the Snoop Dogg lyrics case is a bad application of hate speech laws.
One could, however, find cases of all laws being abused, from eminent domain to property crime laws, drug laws, libel, qualified immunity, you name it. That does not mean that those laws are all categorically bad laws.
(Though I think qualified immunity has shown itself in practice to be categorically bad.)
None of the examples given relate to violence. Quashed for being unpopular, immoral, etc. yes. But well out of the definition of hate speech.
I think the definition of hate speech does a pretty good job at highlighting the core issue: no violence. Doesn't mean your message must be popular or in line with the popular views of society at the time.
I can't find a good reason to advocate violence against a group based on blanket criteria. Can you find one? Any of your examples were more about instigating violence against someone or about receiving more rights?
Hate speech is not about violence though. Plenty of countries have laws against incitement to violence without having hate speech laws. Take the United States as an example. Harassment and incitement to violence can still be illegal without hate speech laws. The Cambridge dictionary says this:
>public speech that expresses hate OR encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation
Notice the "or". Simply expressing hate is enough by this definition, which is clearly not violence.
>Doesn't mean your message must be popular or in line with the popular views of society at the time.
Religious people argued in the past that gay marriage is not okay because it goes against their religion. If they had had hate speech laws then they probably would've used them against advocates of gay marriage.
> Simply expressing hate is enough by this definition
But was that definition ever applied as such? I see people arguing that it was but not a single valid example was provided. A case where courts punished someone for promoting hate but no violence whatsoever.
I most certainly meant ‘rationalization’, believing that freedom of expression, the most fundamental building block of a free society, should be restricted to your own idea of reasonable is absolutely something that you need to internally rationalize.
> your apparent supposition here is that lines regarding reasonable discourse should be scare quoted, or are mere matters of entirely subjective speculation.
Reasonable is an entirely subjective quality, there is no objective framework for divining reasonableness.
> If you want to fix your thinking on the topic
The fact that you believe you have some position of authority to dictate to others how they should “fix their thinking”, so that their thoughts are somehow more correct, really says a lot about you.
> The invitation to provide concrete examples of valuable discourse that's criminalized by hate speech
Here you go, legitimate religious speech resulting in a conviction:
Here’s another person receiving a wrongful arrest payout for exactly the same crime, to highlight exactly how absurd these laws are, even to the people enforcing them:
Of course, please feel free to explain to me why none of that speech was reasonable in the first place. Perhaps you could enlighten me with some correct thinking.
> I don't consider Hammond's sign to be legitimate religious speech.
Agree with it or not, his sign contained a message that is part of the religious doctrine of well over half the worlds population. This comment just reinforces the fact that for for all of us who don’t live in a country with such draconian speech laws, we are lucky we don’t have to check with you first to find out whether our ideas are correct before we express them.
> Agree with it or not, his sign contained a message that is part of the religious doctrine of well over half the worlds population.
So just because half the world believes something hateful, that should make it ok?
Regardless, "Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism" is not actually a part of the religious doctrine of all of Christianity. Many denominations have come out as pro-LGBT.
> we are lucky we don’t have to check with you first to find out whether our ideas are correct before we express them
It's words...on a sign outside in public. People assaulted him with water and soil but didn't get arrested. What was on his sign was irrelevant.
The justification by the judge that convicted him essentially said he was responsible for peoples' reaction because they got offended by his sign. That is a complete reversal of logic, and means that you can wrap the definition of "hate speech" over anything that sufficiently large group of people find offensive/insulting.
Consider these two responses someone might make to this sentence:
(1) In discussion where clear examination and exchange of relevant ideas matters most, we make distinctions all the time between reasonable discourse and unreasonable discourse. Students of rhetoric distinguish between ethos, pathos, and logos. Practitioners of logic distinguish between sound and fallacious reasoning. And as I'm pointing out yet again here, the legal field already makes any number of distinctions regarding how speech functions that are related to the degree to which it is protected or not protected.
(2) Your clear failings in this discussion mark you as an irredeemable utter piece of shit, an overconfident idiot who is fit for nothing better than to be dragged out of your house, beaten on livestream to people laughing at you while those watching send in messages of proper encouragement those beating you, until finally someone finally extracts the only worthwhile thing that can come out of the pathetic gray matter inside your skull: marry it to the pavement like Jackson Pollock did with paint and canvas. And the world will be a better place in every way. In fact, the sooner we get rid of people like you, the better.
Which is more reasonable discourse? #1 or #2? I think it's pretty clear that it's #1. I certainly wouldn't consider #2 a contribution to reasonable discourse as anything other than a hyperbolic counterexample. HN guidelines would make that kind of distinction as well (and in fact, even though it should be clear that #2 is a hyperbolic counterexample, it may carry enough baggage that I may have run afoul of the guidelines anyway... but of course, as an ardent defender of absolute speech rights, presumably you're not one to appeal to such guidelines?).
Do you really think that's an entirely subjective distinction? I think consensus is broad enough that it could be said to be objective on a human scale.
Some forms of speech aren't discursive exchanges of ideas.
> The fact that you believe you have some position of authority to dictate to others how they should “fix their thinking”, so that their thoughts are somehow more correct
You know it's possible to be wrong about something, right? You can need your thinking fixed about whether you understand force vector diagrams sufficiently well to use them as tools to get accurate insights into relevant physics, or as most on this forum should know, you can need your mental model of a program corrected by a compiler (or a second pair of eyes). And one might even need their understanding of the values and dynamics involved in free speech issues corrected.
So while we're talking about character in this discussion, let's observe that you're the first person to invoke it with a general ad hominem, on top of this weird idea that your thinking can't be broken.
The idea that thinking can be broken is directly tied up with the main reason why free speech matters. If any idea is just as good as any other idea, if any attempt to bring them into a value framework is purely subjective, then no robust exchange of ideas matters.
> Of course, please feel free to explain to me why none of that speech was reasonable in the first place. Perhaps you could enlighten me with some correct thinking.
If you're looking for enlightenment regarding Hammond, you could start by reading the court case and/or proceedings behind relevant law. Believe it or not, reasoned examination of social philosophy and law is something that can happen in the courts and legislative bodies. If you don't believe that happened here, you could try engaging with the court's reasoning.
But we don't have to involve that much work to start addressing issues in play. If you're particularly dismayed by the prospect of some fundamental human activity like speech being policed or outright curtailed by the law (or even by the suggestion that that it should be) then it should be easy for you to see why Hammond's sign was immediately problematic. It enters a similar assertion regarding sexuality.
Now, you can say "well, the antidote if any for that is more speech" and maybe that's true in many cases. But context matters in at least two ways here: first, the history of legal restrictions and informal violence related to homosexual activity. "Stop homosexuality" takes on a particular character when we're still in living memory of cases like Alan Turing's.
And the other contextual point has to do with the question I entered this discussion with: what's been lost? What can you literally not talk about? Are there no venues in which one can elaborate on desirable vs undesirable dynamics related to homosexuality specifically or sexuality in general? Or even in which it can't be proposed that it might be legally restricted? I'm going to bet the answer is no. Situational curtailing of some forms discourse in some forums is distinct from an attack on diversity of thought.
But let's say it was. Does a society that can't talk about elimination of homosexuality lose anything in particular? Anything that isn't comparable to the loss of a social capacity to talk about the question of whether practice of Judaism (or Christianity, or Islam) should be "stopped" (since, presumably, you're concerned about the exercise of religious liberty)?
> Here’s another person receiving a wrongful arrest payout for exactly the same crime
The article doesn't seem to give enough information to determine whether or not the exact same crime was committed. Do you have other information?
> whatever it is you perceive to be “reasonable discourse”
Is there anything that you personally would consider to be a step too far? Anything that would make you say "this should really, really not be allowed"? Alternatively do you have an example of (subjectively) reasonable speech that was criminalized?
> Unreasonable discourse has been instrumental in much of our progress as a society
In the sense that society evolved with this as the example of "don't".
“Hate speech” laws are simply enforcing an orthodox morality. In my life I’ve seen many different groups attempt it. When I was a kid it was conservative Christians lobbying Congress to get Twisted Sister off MTV, and god forbid (literally) you wanted to promote some sort of alternative sexuality... Luckily for us, society rejected the enforced morality then, just as its doing now with all the backlash against this sort of toxic politics.
The Gores’s (PMRC) were also part of that but I’d not consider them religious conservatives. They just thought they were “protecting kids” or whatever.
I think it's important to be on the same page about what free speech and hate speech mean, the definitions, the limitations, otherwise we'll go nowhere. Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".
The example you gave (with the details provided) doesn't sound like hate speech on either side. And I don't think people were imprisoned for speech promoting or rejecting "alternative sexuality" over the past decades in any free country unless they were also promoting the hate and violence to go with their opinion. Being pro or against something is free speech. Promoting violence against someone is hate speech.
Can you help with an example of what you'd say is a step too far or is any speech free (never hate) speech? If a significant group of people would advocate violence against you and you felt your life is in peril every day would you want that (hate) speech to be limited in any way?
> Hate speech is "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".
Do you believe that this is somehow an objective definition? It’s not. It’s also not the definition that is actually applied by the law. To know whether somebody is expressing hate, you must know the contents of their mind. This is obviously impossible, so the law that is actually applied is based on whether anybody perceived hate. As anybody is free to interpret speech in anyway they please, this simply ends up criminalizing ideas.
Probably the most controversial way the law has been applied (actually been applied, in practice, with convictions) is people expressing their own moral objections to homosexuality. Now you could speak the phrase “I morally object to homosexuality”, and you could be expressing any number of non-hateful things. You could be expressing “I have a different view”, “I am promoting a different view”, “I disapprove of a different view”... But you could also read that statement and perceive it to be hateful. The criminality is not determined by the act, but by the audience, and the subjective views of law enforcement.
There is no such thing as objective hate speech, outside of the incredibly rare (in terms of enforcement) situations where somebody is explicitly expressing hate. The primary impact of such laws is to enforce a political orthodoxy, and to suppress speech that may challenge it. That not even to mention the fact that suppressing the expression of hateful ideas does nothing to suppress the ideas. It simply emboldens the people who hold those ideas, generates more support for them, and ensures they can’t be challenged by actual dialogue.
> Do you believe that this is somehow an objective definition? It’s not.
It's better than anything you've provided so far (vagaries completely devoid of concrete examples). That definition makes it pretty clear that encouraging violence towards a group based on the such mentioned criteria constitutes hate speech. It has nothing to do with "the content of their mind". Thought is not punished, action is. And if the action is calling for violence then it's called "hate speech". Whether you actually hate them or not makes no difference to the meaning of the term: call for violence against a group based on the defined criteria.
Why are you avoiding providing concrete examples instead of vague "could" and "probably"? If this is abused I'm sure there are thousands of examples of people being unreasonably silenced by calling their speech "hate speech". Are you afraid that there are no examples, or that you'll claim some extremist rant is "reasonable" thus attracting a lot of hate... I mean free speech towards you? Where do you draw the line for what's reasonable and what's not?
> (actually been applied, in practice, with convictions)
Which is why I'm sure you'll be more than happy to provide example of someone being convicted for saying "I don't support the idea of homosexuality and morally object it [period]", without actually calling for violence. Unless it's unsubstantiated BS.
> The criminality is not determined by the act, but by the audience, and the subjective views of law enforcement.
Stands to reason the concept of crime should not exist and anyone should be allowed to commit any act under the defense that "it's all subjective man".
I'm having a hard time taking the best interpretation of your comments and assuming good faith.
P.S. Take the (now flagged) comment below. It's obviously misinformed and wrong in so many ways, and there's a lot of impotence and frustration behind those words, possibly even hate. But the comment itself is not hate speech as it doesn't actually instigate violence. In the private space of HN though the comment was seen as garbage (much like every other comment the sock account has posted) and the ideas rejected still without violating anyone's rights.
Additionally, I have yet to encounter any example of reasonable discourse that's being legally suppressed by hate speech laws, but, you know, feel free to make a list of the important ideas that you feel are being SILENCED.
Private companies: not that different in the fundamentals, but there are additional issues that lean towards both the right of ownership to speak and restrict speech that comes through them. You likely wouldn't want anyone to force you to repeat ideas you believe are incorrect, or contrary to key personal interests even where narrowly correct, or even lead to effects you find personally undesirable. If freedom of speech means anything, it has to include some measure of judgment about what your personal faculties are used to express, and to some more moderated extent what/how your property is used. There may be balancing concerns in the latter case, but whether we're at that point is another issue. Again, I can think of very little in the realm of valuable discourse that's been walled off here; if there's anything at all, I suspect the relevant mechanism is essentially social values that are held widely enough that contrary expressions bring social consequences, and while you can create some spaces for robust contrary discussion ("safe spaces", if you like), you can't eliminate the kickback from broad social consequences without treading more heavily on other liberties of equal or greater importance to speech.
Honestly, if there's any issue at all here, it's that there has never been an EASIER time to express ideas -- even very unpopular ones -- quite widely, and it's the way that these ideas carry widely that's leading to a level of tension that people are still figuring out how to manage.
And really, this is the weaponization issues: 50 years ago, authoritarian countries didn't have the capabilities of broadcasting ideas or disinformation into your average household, much less an individual handheld device. A world-of-ends internet means that they do.