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[Hate Speech]: how America (and the world) deals with it
Posts
You view government as "the enemy" and feel like it is out to get you.
I find that sentiment hopelessly anarchistic. I can understand it intellectually but don't relate to it at all.
Yes, we definitely need to be protected from such draconian punishments as two years in prison (less time served) with eligibility for full parole after 8 months.
No no, what we really need is even harsher prison sentences for <whatever type of drugs it is black people are using but definitely not the prescription drugs white people are abusing>.
We're down to like 20 years minimum for a few grams of crack and there is talk of even paroling some of these people. Please think of the children vote "yes" to "worst criminal justice system in the entire god damn first world".
I see that punishment as horribly out of line with me yelling a hateful thing at a black dude.
Two years in jail for shouting the n-word? What?
That's the definition of draconian sentencing.
The penalties in Lawrence v Texas was a class C misdemeanor; max Fine $500 no jail time. Clearly not enough of a penalty to be even worth challenging.
Wikipedia seems to suggest the accused requested higher penalties than they were given, as the actual penalty imposed did not meet the minimum for an appeal.
That's some pretty big hyperbole.
There's little doubt that some of our police are incompetent and corrupt. There's also little doubt that our judges need to go under some serious review. We've got dozens of stories and incidents that I feel it to be intellectually insulting to link them here.
You can criticize the government and be wary of it (A legal system that charges a 12 year old millions for stolen songs, for instance) without outright thinking it's your enemy and it's actively working against you at all times.
Is this a character assassination attempt? Far be it from me to come running to the defense of Spool (He's a big boy and I don't think we've ever agreed on anything) but this is just fucking goosefeathers here.
So that's happened, has it?
Who was it who said that just being gay is essentially a hate crime against wing nut conservatives?
Yeah.
America.
The actual chance of someone getting two years even as a suspended sentence for Section 4a R&R is non-existent.
Horsefeathers.
You're playing ball on both sides of the field, making it impossible to argue anything. If you say the police are bad and the electorate is bad and someone else uses this in an argument you go off on "WELL FUCK AMERICA THEN IF THE COUNTRY SUCKS SO BAD JUST LEAVE", and if someone posts something in favor of the way the country works you do this mocking of supernationalists USA USA bullshit just to be a goose.
You're in favor of regulating hate speech but absolutely refuse to see how it could backfire in a country where every time we try to legislate morality it fucking blows up in our face (Prohibition, Marijuana illegality, Equal Rights, Sexual Offender Laws) with alarming reguarity.
Circle back to my posts about the chilling effect. It doesn't have to come to pass, as long as it's possible.
It should be impossible, rather than merely unlikely (assuming the government shows mercy).
You were the one that suggested that laws that violated rights but were infrequently enforced were no big deal.
The right to have same sex intercourse free from governmental prosecution is not more fundamental than the right to express unpopular ideas free from governmental prosecution.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Right, because it is utterly impossible to hold the position that the police in various US jurisdictions frequently over-reach and that has terrible consequences AND that hate speech laws have a chilling effect on speech. I'm not even sure what your point, if you had any, was.
I disagree. I think it is only mild hyperbole.
No, that was your suggestion!
I suggested that the police making a handful of mistakes in interpreting a law was not a sign that the law was a messy catastrophe. They were set straight and hopefully will not make the same inappropriate arrest again in the future.
This post made me wonder how inverse-hyperbole works. "It's SOOOOOO insignificant and SOOOOO small, etc."
To be fair, if you can't pass strict scrutiny, then the law would not be viable. I'm not asking if we should have these laws; in asking if, Constitutionally, we even can.
If you've been reading the thread you will see that I'm only in favor of Americans not being overly presumptuous when discussing these sorts of laws in other countries.
That was what originally spawned this thread. We've drifted conversationally and I've made some arguments in favor of hypothetical hate speech legislation, with the understanding that we'll never see them come to pass due to the 1st amendment.
Really my opinion on this can be summarized as two distinct points:
1) Hate speech laws do not lead to harsh restrictions on public discourse in a healthy democracy
2) American democracy is struggling and we're not in a position to tell other countries how to manage civil liberties any longer (and perhaps we never were)
It hurts and I usually leave the bedroom crying.
The answer then is "It is very unlikely"
RAV v St Paul says no.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Yeah. When I go outside and walk around the only thing I think of is how much this place reminds me of North Korea or 1800's Georgia.
Well there you go. Give an honest answer to clarify things and you get back poo poo.
Because saying that democracy is struggling in this country is just totally the same as saying we're Best Korea.
If there's one thing I'm taking away from this discussion, it's that hate speech laws don't really seem to change much one way or another. Countries with hate speech laws haven't seen those laws abused on a large scale (if there has been abuse at all), and they still have a totally robust political discourse. Countries without hate speech laws are not immune from governmental overreach, and whatever racial (etc.) tensions exist are slowly abating. Hate speech laws are neither a catastrophe waiting to happen nor a panacea.
This definition is what makes me nervous about hate speech laws. Especially the bolded part. If a hate speech law was constructed that way, I would want it shot down.
Yeah someone made a good point way back at the beginning of the thread that the amount of freedom of expression you have has way to do more with the way your country is fundamentally constructed than anything else.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
People wanting it is what made it happen. It works the other way around to, with the public wanting repression and theocracy and whoops now we're stoning people to death for showing some ankle. In the south there were a litany of legal measures that were thrown up to try and block civil rights for blacks. In the end, legislating to try and stop it didn't work because people wouldn't shut up; they wanted it. If more of them had been thrown in prison, if there had been more laws trying to stop them, I doubt the end result would have been different. Unless you're in a totalitarian state with a government backed by military force, the government is ultimately going to reflect what the people desire it to be. And sometimes that means the gay roller rolling out civil rights and sometimes it means sharia law.
Second, I don't really buy the whole "other countries have hate speech laws but aren't totalitarian hell holes, so we can too!" argument. Canada for example has already used their hate speech laws to ban religious people from handing out anti gay fliers and initial banned anti gay opinion pieces. While I absolutely detest the sentiment that these people were spreading, I also find it upsetting that canada is censoring their religious views. I should note that neither case involved any suggestions of violence or discrimination. They were simply religious people spreading their incorrect viewpoint that being homosexual is immoral.
The ottawa attorney general has also (albeit unsuccessfully), tried to bar eminem from performing in canada on the basis of their hate speech laws. While you can claim that is a success in terms of hate speech laws not being abused, the fact that high ranking officials think it was appropriate and are actively pushing for that use is in my mind very troublesome. All it takes is one judge to then agree with the attorney general and now you are censoring art that you don't agree with.
Really you don't have to look any further than anti-piracy laws in the US to see why writing even very targeted legislation almost always leads to suppression of competition/ideas that you didn't intend for. Link to consequences of DMCA. I have no idea how biased/falsified that link is, but it seems to bring up some pretty good examples of the DMCA law being used to suppress research/competition. The idea that you could create this magic hate speech law that will never be used to suppress legit view points that people disagree with just doesn't seem likely. Sure it wouldn't lead to immediate implementation of 1984 like government, but it will almost certainly be used eventually in a way that goes against the idea of freedom of ideas.
Except this proves exactly the point you "don't buy".
Stupid people think alot of things. See: The US House of Representatives
And yet, nothing came of it because the AG was being stupid and the law was not on his side.
Both your examples prove the same point and it's not the one you are trying to make.
Right, so back to the slippery slope.
That's a quote from one of the pamphlets. What part of it would you say is a simple religious belief?
No law will ever be implemented perfectly all the time. But, of course, we don't see the predicted overreaches and major chilling of discourse. Every so often we do see someone try to get take the hate speech law ball and run with it, but those cases typically go nowhere, and provide useful precedent to restrain people from trying to pull the same stunt.
Legislating morality on the other hand...
This is like a slipper slope fallacy squared.
Alternatively
Dot Dot Dot: For when you don't have an actual example to use
I think it depends on how you define functioning. Democracy is not truly functioning correctly, in my opinion, unless everyone is allowed to freely participate in the process. In that sense, the fact that hate speech laws have led some countries to ban political parties is really all I need to say in terms of evidence. I'm not arguing that countries with hate speech laws will descend into madness, poverty and plague; I'm saying that, empirically, a democracy that governs without the consent of some of the governed is not a good or healthy democracy, however it may appear to the unaffected majority. To paraphrase, "in its infinite wisdom, the government permits all men to speak to the approved truth, whether they believe in it or not" is no way to run a society, even if the trains are still on time.
I apologize, I read this incorrectly when I was bleary eyed this morning as "describe a counter-protest and I'll tell you how it is or is not hate speech based on my definition."
I think the protest I described is blatantly hate speech under your definition. It's directed at a religious group, it contains multiple insulting and false statements about that group with the goal of enforcing behavior on that group (getting them to stop protesting, that day and presumably in general). It contains the equivalent of "why don't you just commit suicide?" which seems no different in form than the bullying of suicidal LGBT teens cited earlier in the thread. And if "God Hates Fags" is hate speech, "God Hates [You]" must also be hate speech.
Do I find "guilt by association" problematic? Yes. "Are you now, or have you ever been a part of..." is some scary, scary stuff.
Gay sex is immoral.
There will be consequences if gay sex becomes increasingly acceptable
Therefore civil law should discriminate against them.
and
Despite the relatively recent prohibited status of same gender sex, there is now substantial resistance to voicing opposition to the increasing perceived legitimacy of open homosexuals.
The first might be wrong but its still an opinion, and the latter cleared had at least some truth.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I don't understand your first point. It doesn't prove that hate speech laws are totally legit. I do not find those examples acceptable forms of censorship.
This isn't a stupid people say stupid things argument, because what the AG wanted wasn't explicitly against the law. It is literally up to select individuals to decide what is or isn't considered hate speech and in this case went with the argument that women are not a protected class, so not hate speech. Not once did I see a reference to anyone claiming that what the AG wanted was obviously not legal, which is what you often see when republicans espouse nonsense.
Finally, your last argument is not refuting what I said. You're claiming that it's unlikely these laws will be misused and I have given you a direct example in contradiction of that idea. Either you think the example is inaccurate in some way, or you're wrong that this is just a "slippery slope" argument that will never come to pass.
I don't see how that's not a religious belief. It's not your religious belief, nor is it mine, nor is it most peoples, but that doesn't mean it can't be his. He's not asking for violence, he's not asking for you to be hostile towards LGBTs, he's simply stating his belief that they should not have equal protection under the law because he believes it is immoral. Isn't this exactly how democracy is supposed to work? He advocates for changing law Y, and you advocate for keeping law Y, and in the end we all get to vote on it?
I'm just not a fan of the argument that just because it hasn't worked yet clearly that means it won't ever work. Yeah canada isn't a totalitarian dictatorship. That doesn't mean no one in canada has ever had their viewpoints suppressed unfairly. Or that it can't continue to become more suppressive in the future because these laws exist.