Free speech

[robvalue]

My reply here is in response to the opening post, but it's not aimed directly at that person. It's my general thoughts on the issues, directed at anyone who thinks there is a problem with allowing religious criticism as part of freedom of speech.

There is a big difference between posting jesus memes on the internet and treating an actual christian badly, as a person. Such as discriminating against them at work. The problem there is the discrimination, it's a separate issue.

There is a big difference between insulting ideas and insulting people. If theists choose to take insults about their ideas to be personal insults, then that is their problem.

There's also a big difference between saying something in general about christians, or christianity, and going up to a specific christian with hateful comments about them specifically. The second is also part of free speech, but it may be punishable due to the fact that it is harassment or hate speech. It depends on the severity, and each case would be considered separately. But the point is you don't get censored or arrested just for uttering certain words or opinions. It is looked at after the fact, to see if it was acceptable or not.

So please be very clear what it is you are objecting to. What kinds of things are being said or done, in what context, and to what audience. If something is being said so that other people can easily choose to read/hear it or not, it's not causing a public nuisance or being intrusive, it's targeting ideas rather than people, and it's not openly encouraging hateful acts... then as far as I'm concerned it's fine. If you don't like it, ignore it. If you think it's wrong, debate it. If you think it is hate speech and has gone too far, report it. But don't try and censor speech. Even if it doesn't meet my arbitrary guidelines above, the proper thing to do is complain about that specific piece of speech. Not to try and censor speech as a whole as a pre-emptive measure. That in itself would be extreme prejudice. My guidelines were just a rough idea of what I would interpret as perfectly fine, and would not be punishable if reported.

If something else is happening along with the "free speech" such as discrimination, violence... anything... then complain about those other things, don't try and make out that freedom of speech is part of those other things.

And here is the rub. If you say you can't say anything that may offend a theist, consider this. Anyone can come up with any arbitrary religion, any time they like, and they can decide that anything is offensive to them. For example, I just created a religion where I find apples sacred, and no one should ever talk about them. It is deeply offensive to write that word. Should everyone respect this and stop writing the word apple? [Don't worry, I'll be punishing myself later for my blaspheme, to my very core]. You can say "a new religion like that is just stupid", but it's no more or less stupid than established religions. Not at all.

[Alex K]

OP is not specific enough to say anything.

[Thumpalumpacus]

"No" to all the OP's questions.

[Alex K]

"No" to all the OP's questions.

Well it depends...

Should the humiliation of Christians possibly be considered a hate-crime? Where do you draw the line and does no line take us down a slippery slope?

We probably shouldn't drag them naked through the streets behind our atheist horses, if that's what you mean

But imagine I went on stage to play a Rachmaninov Piano Concerto, fully convinced that I can do it, but on opening night the audience realizes that I don't know how to play the piano at all, and the critics tear me to shreds. Should they be forbidden to say that I am a terrible pianist to avoid humiliating me? How dare they attack my deeply held belief that I am the next Horowitz!

[pocaracas]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone here not believe that their should be freedom of speech and religious expression in our country?

"our country"...
Why are people still so attached to the notion of country?

"our planet" has a much better ring to it!

Should the humiliation of Christians possibly be considered a hate-crime?

Why?
Is any humiliation considered a hate-crime?

Or rather, do you want to go down that slippery slope?
Should the humiliation of gays possibly be considered a hate-crime?
Should the humiliation of muslims possibly be considered a hate-crime?
Should the humiliation of atheists possibly be considered a hate-crime?
Should the humiliation of eyeglass-wearing-folk possibly be considered a hate-crime?
Should the humiliation of dark-eyed people possibly be considered a hate-crime?

Should any humiliation be considered a hate-crime?

Where do you draw the line and does no line take us down a slippery slope?

Oh... you had already thought of it...
Where would you draw the line?
Humiliation of some feature which only 1% of the population has? 5% of the population? 10%?


Better not make it a hate-crime, then, huh?

[FreeTony]

Think about the treatment of Atheists or Liberals by Fox News or other Right Wing media outlets. It would seem normal to label them as immoral, stupid, anti-American etc. Is this humiliation? This is considered fine under US free speech laws. I have no problem with this as long as it is applied equally.

It really says something about your religion if it has to be protected from people pointing out how stupid it is.

If you really want some good examples of hate crime then I suggest looking up the actions of the Yahweh character in the bible.

[robvalue]

I couldn't care less what anyone says about atheists. Almost everything people say about it is wrong, and I can easily rebut it. So can anyone who picks up a dictionary and has a brain. But mostly I don't care. I don't make it my identity.

I think part of the hurt of theists is that they can't rebut it. They know they have no legs to stand on, and can't put forward a rational response. So if they don't like it they can either ignore it, or cry about it. I wish more would do the former. There is a third option of course, which is they could think about it. Think about why it is so easy to make fun of religion, and that this is the point of (good) satire.

[Cato]

Laws exist that protect citizens in the U.S. from discrimination in the workplace. There are also laws prohibiting physical violence and incitement to violence. This means that all you're after is the ability to use hurt feelings, real or imagined, as justification to use the power of the state to shelter you from criticism.

If you don't want your beliefs to be ridiculed, don't hold ridiculous beliefs. The sincerity and conviction with which you hold beliefs have no bearing on the truthfulness of those beliefs. I recommend engaging in the marketplace of ideas rather than attempting to hide under your mother's skirt. If your ideas can't survive debate, even if cruel on occasion, then your ideas need to change; not the rules of engagement.

[paulpablo]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone here not believe that their should be freedom of speech and religious expression in our country?

Should the humiliation of Christians possibly be considered a hate-crime? Where do you draw the line and does no line take us down a slippery slope?


Love over tongue-lashing or na?[/i]

I'm skeptical of what use classifying any crime as a hate crime is, but humiliating a christian is not a hate crime just by itself.

If I think christian beliefs are bullshit for example and I want to express that then I should be able to even if it humiliates Christians.

Although if it was proven that I had a discussion with someone and I said "I want to humiliated these christians by causing them physical harm/vandalizing property/causing a public nuisance" Then that would just be me conspiring to commit a crime I suppose, in which case I'm guessing charges could be brought against me.

I think there's a common sense factor to what I personally believe in with regarding freedom of speech and it's admittedly very blurry.

like on a video I saw on youtube about a girl who was proud she broke her hand because she punched a guy in the face for making a joke about rape, at first I thought that sounded a bit harsh but then I found out the joke about rape consisted of a guy calling out to another drunk girl across the street, she ignored him, so he said to his friend something like "I'll take that cunt down an alley and rape the bitch, she won't even see it coming."

If I was with my friend and he made a joke like that and got punched in the face by a girl I wouldn't be protecting my friends freedom of speech, I'd probably laugh and congratulate the girl .

Me and my friends do make rape jokes though, and I mainly make them with girls I'm seeing, but they will be things like joking slightly about putting something in their drink and they know I'm joking about it, or I'll joke about taking advantage of them while drunk, on the other hand if I made sexual advances on a girl then she refused my advances and I then said to her something like "Listen you cunt I could just take you now and you couldn't stop me." In my personal opinion that's too serious, because that could easily be a serious threat and if a guy made that joke and got stabbed with a knife I'd completely be on the girls side because she couldn't have known it was a joke.

Plus there's a lot of prank shows on youtube now, where guys go into rough ghetto type areas and say rude things to people to try and get punched for camera, or in some instances just shout things at random people thru a megaphone to startle them, in those instances I'm definitely on the side of the people who punch them in the face, it's hard to see how they don't deserve it when they are literally asking for it.
It used to happen all the time in my work because one guy would constantly try and make me jump by shouting loud right behind me, and a lot of times primal instincts took over and I'd kick him or throw something at him fairly hard. We both found it funny though so there was no harm done. Except for the moment of stress I'd get by the shouting and the moment of pain he would get by being kicked.

But then just to make one more point, I don't think any joke is bad enough to kill someone over, in the cases where Muslims kill people over stuff that's drawn or written about them they aren't being threatened physically, or startled suddenly into an act of violence. And even if you do believe in Islam, Muhammad is a prophet of god, surely he can take care of his own problems.

I think that this is where the problem lies. Because if I believed that one man over a thousand years ago was more important than all my family members living or dead, and I loved him more than my own family, then I would want to hurt people who insulted him.
But then from my perspective, the more secular perspective, if a group of people go around arrogantly threatening people with death everytime they're offended by what someone has to say about this man, then they deserve even more criticism because going around killing people, or threatening to kill people if they say certain things isn't acceptable.

[robvalue]

Bravo! Very well said.