The Maelstrom of Violence

[pbrower2a]

(09-07-2017, 09:53 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: That isn't clear.  If one claims that any typical adult can shrug off hate speech or cries for genocide, you can live in a society full of cries for genocide mixed with hate speech.  Me, that's not the sort of society I'm looking for.  Not all of us perceive the world as Kinser does.  It seems reasonable for legislatures to feel the same as I and act on it.  Canada is quite explicit and rational in banning certain specific things.  Under the principle that negative rights do not grant an ability to harm, if you think promoting genocide and hate is harmful, you have a consistent legal position.

I know enough to not try to form a Nazi group, raise my right arm in a Nazi salute, paint a swastika, or sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied in Germany or Austria. (You know where I stand on that. As a German-American I would choose converting to Judaism over becoming a Nazi -- because Judaism is compatible with my cultural and moral values, and Nazism isn't). But that is not much of a restriction, not much more severe than a prohibition on the use of cocaine. Both countries treat Nazism as something shameful, something that must never happen again. Germans and Austrians hate Nazis as if they were brutal, foreign occupiers.

Maybe it is in part because the Nazis were defeated after being exposed as the genocidal monsters that they were. Had history been inverted and while Nazis faded into near-oblivion in Germany while the Klan prevailed in America, and the international coalition defeated a genocidal KKK, would it be Klan groups, slogans, symbols, and songs that would be illegal in America?  I would think so. The Klan has much the same bigotry and much the same objects of hatred as Nazis, and a similar proclivity to violence.

In my experience as a sub school teacher, I have never had a problem with referring a student to the principal's office for racial, sexual, or religious slurs. Do you think that there is freedom of speech in the classroom? Not really.  Students can get away with questioning my competence or correcting an error... but that is part of learning. I do not consider bureaucratic toadying a legitimate object of teaching in a K-12 classroom. But use fighting words against a fellow student, and you are out of the classroom.

Quote:The awakening's Civil Rights Act is based more on commerce than free speech.  If you are running a business, you can't discriminate.  Words while not running a business hits a different legal crack.  Me, I'm in favor of free speech, but not hate speech and definitely not genocide.  I feel the 'free speech' language is often a cover for those favoring genocide and hate.  If the Alt Right weren't acting as a cover for neo Nazi and Neo Confederates, it would be far easier to sympathies with the them on other forms speech.  As is, you have to wonder.

With commerce, ethnic equity requires that people get what is generally promised, and that does not mean implicitly 'only for white, straight Christians'. A business owner has a right to refuse to promote something disgusting that is not protected by the Constitution. As far as that goes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 constitutes the legislation necessary to enforce the provisions of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (among others) to the Constitution.

So we can discuss the "frosting of the cake". If I own the bakery, can I refuse to bake a cake for someone protected against discrimination? No -- so I had better offer a cake to the black family if it is willing to pay for it. Or if it is for a Bar Mitzvah? No.

So a wedding cake -- if it is for an interfaith, same-sex, or interracial marriage? If I can squeeze "Adam and Genevieve" on a cake, I can also frost "Adam and Steve". Even should I find a marriage between a black man and a pretty white girl disgusting, I had better put the statuette of such a couple on the cake if such is appropriate. Putting a cross and a Mogen David on the cake? I will do it.

So what can I refuse? Something disgusting for which there is no obvious protection. If it is a satanic curse or an underworld threat  (a cake made to look like a tombstone with the threat "Pay up or die!"... well, I say no. Something praising pedophilia or Nazi ideology? Certainly I wouldn't do it. Obscenity, as a depiction of a sex act? Heh, heh -- no way will I do that. "Donald Duck" on a birthday cake (when I do not have the rights)  instead of "Daffy Duck" (for which I have the rights)? I will not do trademark or copyright violations. As a practical matter, I will make a cake celebrating a win for Senator Snake on the opposite side of my partisan affiliation.

Humiliation of people on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is not a right.  Freedom of speech does not mean the right to a pliant audience and does not deny one the right to avoid speaking.