dcnovice
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quote:
dc, firstly, as to whether it was an infringement of their own citizens' rights - NO IT IS NOT. The Canadian hate laws prohibit this type of speech. It is NOT protected speech in Canada. That is a fact. So the answer to your question is that it is not an infringement of their rights.
Embedded in this response is a huge and (at least to my mind) potentially dangerous assumption: that citizens have only the rights a government chooses to grant them. Do people not have "certain unalienable Rights" by virtue of being human?
In 1798, President John Adams forever stained his honor and may well have lost himself reelection by signing the Sedition Act, which made it unlawful to "write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States...." The law was duly enacted by Congress--in peacetime, no less--and signed by the Chief Executive. Does that mean that its curtailment of civil liberties was legitimate, wise, right? People were actually charged, tried, and convicted under this law, so it wasn't some intellectual parlor game. (Jefferson, to his credit, pardoned them.)
quote:
Even in the US there is no such thing as no restrictions whatsoever on speech.
This sentence comes awfully close to being a straw man. No one on the thread has argued that the U.S. has a complete lack of limits on speech. And yours truly explicitly addressed the point earlier. To me, though, the extent to which we've already eroded the First Amendment is as much a cautionary tale as a license to do so in new ways.
quote:
For example, you can't bully someone in schools for being gay in most states in the US. This is not considered a restriction on free speech even though it obviously infringes the rights of those who believe homosexuality is wrong. We have made a determination that the rights of the gay kids matters more than the free speech rights of those who think homosexuality is wrong.
I wonder if that's really true in most states. There are some seriously crimson states out there. Where'd you learn that?
That nitpick aside, there are also communities that have prohibited the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools because they have, as you put it, "made a determination" (a turn of phrase which which now becomes chilling) that the rights of gay kids matter less than the deeply held moral views of community members. And, to be honest, there probably are places aplenty where the latter far outnumber the former. What in your framework makes this proscription of speech any less valid than the anti-bullying laws?
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They are entitled to their own definition of what is protected speech.
Again, a bit of a scarecrow here. No one said Canada wasn't. Does the same hold true, then, for North Korea or Iran? Or does sovereignty only matter for governments that meet our standards of "thoughtfulness"?
quote:
If you still feel it was "unwise" of them to do so, I would like to understand whether you support laws like the anti-bullying laws in the US - because anti-bullying laws do, in fact, restrict free speech.
Having been a gay kid who met plenty of bullies along the way, I honestly struggle with this question. On the one hand, I like the idea of benevolent authorities shielding today's kids from what I endured. On the other, knowing the fragility of my own rights and how hard-won they are makes me deeply wary of trampling, even for kindly intentions, on those of others. As a gay man, I know I'll never have numerical clout, so I'd like something more than the (all too possibly temporary) goodwill of a majority to ground my rights.
We've had a wee parade of poster kids in this thread (first the neo-Nazi in Israel, now gay kids in school), so I'll add one of my own: Would it be an example of "hate speech" to criticize the treatment of women in large parts of the Islamic world? I suspect there's no shortage of Muslims who would find that an assault on their religion. Again, this is not an academic question. You may recall that Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh paid with his life for addressing this topic.
< Message edited by dcnovice -- 10/17/2012 6:37:48 PM >
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No matter how cynical you become,
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JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
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RE: Denied entry .... wahhhh - 
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