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Originally Posted by
Rhyfelwyr
I don't see restrictions on public distribution of grossly offensive material as repression, I see it as good governance and as a basic duty of the government - to protect minorities as well as reflect majority sensibilites.
A. What is offensive? If I think a picture of the queen being pissed on is hilarious, why is my view disregarded and yours codified in law?
B. What good is the government doing by protecting the minority by policing what the majority say? Why do you think that will change the attitudes of the majority? Personally, if the US government had banned the n-word, the problem of tackling racism would have been exacerbated, because all those thoughts simply go underground and unchallenged in the public sphere. By allowing "shameful" or "offensive" material to be published you actually now have a mechanism of reaching the public by pointing to concrete examples of "this is wrong".
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Otherwise, people would be subjected to the tyranny of the most vile and contemptuous individuals in society - imagine how a Muslim would feel walking down a city centre where every boulevard, poster and magazine cover shows shockingly blasphemous pictures of their religious leaders and racial characatures of Muslims that are about as sensitive as blackface (seriously, have you seen some of Charlie Hebdo's stuff?).
Might be somewhat similar to pro-choice people in present day US seeing aborted fetuses on billboards every 40 miles in the South (certain regions). People continue to go about their day. Every week a man stands on a soapbox at my Uni and tells me I am going to hell, I am not emotionally distressed.
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Alternatively, imagine how an atheist would feel if he had to walk down a city centre where on every corner there were preachers screaming "atheists will burn in hell, atheists are degenerate", etc. Even in a majority Christian/faith-based society, I would say it is the duty of the government to outlaw such behaviour.
I have experienced that to a degree, and I don't want those sad men to be silenced. I want them to continue saying what they want, and I want to continue ignoring them.
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To me, this is just about basic decency towards your fellow man.
It is more decent to let an individual say what he wants and let him deal accordingly with the consequences of his actions than to "save" others by making sure he knows what is proper to say and what isn't.
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And one final point, your idea of what divisions make a society multicultural is, like the very concepts of what is decent or offensive, entirely arbitrary and subjective. No society is monolithic, to take the example of the UK, around the time it developed free speech there were Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, dissenters, deists, atheists, and even within these groupings, no doubt every individual had their own opinions. I am confident that even today when we now have Muslims, Hindus and others, we are quite capable of broadly agreeing on a basic standard of what constitutes deliberately offensive material.
The UK suffered many internal conflicts and civil wars because of the differences between Protestants and Catholics. Free speech arose because it was the solution to having cohabitation. The more liberal the laws regarding speech became, the more peaceful the divisions became. Now we are at a point where two random strangers, one Catholic and one Protestant can simply agree to disagree and have a pint together. The solution is not to maintain restrictive laws but to make them even more free.
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Isn't the fact that the USA has legally-recognized "free speech zones" kind of a recognition that otherwise, the USA does allow unrestricted free speech?
Seamus answered this pretty well. Even if there is a hypocrisy in what I say versus what my country does, I would say that US laws could and should become even more liberal. There is nothing more blatantly subjective than the phrase "I know it when I see it." And yet, this is the standard on what constitutes art vs pornography. This should be exposed for what it is, and dismantled.
