The previously gay man argued that it was his human right to be ex-Gay and proud just as Gay men have the right to be proud. I liken it to atheists having the right to be proud about not believing in God. In my view this in your face opposition to Gays and believers is out of order.

I think there was a slightly different agenda than merely not wanting to run the ads in the way that they might not wish to run an ad for a particular product. In this case TFL was trying to comply with its obligations under the Equality Act.

Nazis have the right to be proud of their achievement of throwing Jews in the ovens and should be able to advertise this just as much as anti-racists should be able to campaign against racism. Anyway, I think your disdain for 'atheists' clouds your judgment.

Governments, being in essence agents of legalized force - has the splendid capacity to be proactive. That is that they can hammer down on things that can cause bad trends before said trends actually occur.

Had the Weimar Republic managed to do this, many very bad things could have been avoided.

Ofcourse, any such government should also take care with application of force not to end up like North Korea. However, to this day I haven't heard really of a dictatorship with strong hate speech laws for protecting minorities. I doubt it will become a problem.

In the US, we seem to have much freer speech than you have in the UK, and I think it's better here (in the US). You can be as offensive as you want (well, I guess legally in the US you have to deal with some of our prudishness, but I wish you didn't) and should be allowed to. The limits are that your ad shouldn't create a public disturbance (by calling people to riot or the like).

Where are you drawing the line, and who gets to draw that line?

I have no idea what you are saying. Are you disagreeing with me on something, or are you just commenting further on something I said?

I just don't like the idea of the government getting into the business of deciding what you can and can't speak out against. Sets a bad precedent.

Ideally, this makes sense. Practically however, we all know that words can convey both power and action. You might not pull the trigger, but you can still get people killed with slogans.

But between words and actions lies a person who must decide on their own what they will do.

The Government draw the line, that's their responsibility. The quote below is on UK Freedom of Speech which is apparently the strictest in the Western World.

Standing outside a funeral with your children wearing a 'god hates ****' teeshirt would not be tolerated in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom...ech_by_country

This is more of a politics question than an RGT question, but how is that acceptable?

You mean that you think it's too censorial? It's interesting, I've never questioned it before now and I would say that I'm generally against the idea of censorship but I would object to someone being allowed to publicly incite hatred. I'd object to it happening privately too but at least there's an element of privacy to legally shield it and that anyone listening would have had to choose to expose themselves to it.

The Atheist campaign was deliberately as inoffensive as possible, hence the use of the word 'probably' but in any case it's not the same type of issue as someone's sexuality where even to imply that it's a choice is offensive. I also think that the 'gay' campaign was inconsiderate and offensive when it implied that gays can be 'educated' or otherwise have their homosexuality reversed simply because a fundamentalist Christian group object to it. We don't have to be exposed to that kind of bigotry in this country and I guess I support that.

I'd say this is definitely true and things are getting worse here imo. People seem to take offensive at things easier these days and are demanding, and getting, legislation that erodes our freedoms.

Why are you against censorship? Why are you for censoring publicly inciting hatred? I am having trouble reconciling the two. I get censoring speech that causes an imminent risk of harm to someone, but past that I think the freedom of speech is too important.

You do realize I was commenting on the language of the ad, not on the relative probabilities. That is why I used the example of "definitely" and pointed out that it was not a discussion of atheism per se. I had hoped that those reading would understand given those cues.

Me too.

There are degrees of freedom and I suppose that there many levels of, and means by which something said can cause harm. Do you not think that 'god hates f*gs' causes harm to people? Would you not like to stop those people from parading their hatred and bigotry in public and potentially influencing people to behave like them?

As an aside.. Did you know that In Ireland it's illegal to Blaspheme?

AFAIK it's not quite that simple. There isn't an actual definition of 'blasphemy' as understood under the law. It seems that any action would be based on complaints from private parties. Which is arguably worse as it means you can 'blaspheme' without ever intending to.

I haven't heard of any prosecutions under the law and I'm not sure there ever will be any. Though it is indeed a stupid law.

The problem I have is that it's hard to draw a line here. At least with imminent, physical harm, it's easier to see that it should be stopped. But with this psychological harm that may eventually lead to something more tangible, how do we decide? I definitely don't like the idea of the government getting to decide what's ok to speak out against and what's not. Is it too harmful to speak out against gays? fat people? certain government officials?

If you make the government ban hateful speech then I think you give the government too much power. It's better to attack the hate through other means.

I would love for them to stop doing these things, but I would hate for the government to force them to stop.

So 'inciting hatred' is something people should be allowed to do? The verbal persecution of minorities is something you'd allow?

In the US, would it be ok for me to stand on the street wearing a sign saying that 'N*ggers are inferior and subhuman and god hates them'?

Ugh. This kind of histrionics is unnecessary. Ganstaman is not saying it's "ok" to say hateful things, he is saying it should not be made illegal to say them.

That said, this is not what is happening here in the UK. A right to free speech != third-party companies being obliged to carry your message on their products/services.

I think in a country where we have lost so many civil rights since 2002 and we continue to lose them at an alarming rate the question of 'freedom of speech' should take a back-seat.

Sure, but what if my words were "I'll give you ten thousand dollars to kill my wife"?

And no, this isn't a silly example. It is merely at an extreme end of the scale. If this is not an okay usage of words, our disagreement is not on disallowing statements... but a disagreement on which statement to disallow. Which means we are suddenly playing the same ballgame.

For that matter; if we don't make people responsible for their words, we can really just remove government altogether. Having people govern without being responsible for what they say seem like a horrible idea.

I'm not being hysterical. I can see how it might read like that because of the number of question marks but I had that many questions, how else am I supposed to type it? Imagine that I'm being perfectly calm about this and simply asking questions.

To clarify, I wasn't asking him if it he personally felt that it was or wasn't 'alright' to say such hateful things, I was asking him if it's ok for the government to fail to stop someone saying something like that, which is the impression he's given me. I'm trying to ascertain where his threshold is and from that what level of censorship Ganstaman would feel was ok for a government to impose because I think that this just comes down to differing levels of acceptance of censorship.

I think these are things that are (in the US) and should be legal. You can ask as many scenarios as you want, but in the end I've already explained how my decisions were being made, so I don't know why you need me around for this. Or if that's not enough, just look up US laws/court cases as I pretty much agree with them.

Using court cases to back up laws is fine if we are debating within the context of a legal system; but when debating what would be justifiable law, it is awkward to quote law. I suspect you don't think a law is justified because it is law. As the old philosophical objection goes; no rule can explain itself (immensely paraphrased). Humans explain rules.

Now, I know that is probably not what you intended to say... so I'm not concerned with it, I just like to get it out of the way before I ask you: "Where (if anywhere) do you draw the line for acceptable speech?".

I thought that was what I just asked him and the answer it would seem is that there is no line. Particularly if the example I gave didn't cross a line, I can't imagine what I could suggest that would although I'm tempted to try....

I gave what I thought was a pretty extreme scenario that I was reasonably certain you would agree is something that a government would be perfectly justified in censoring. I'm quite surprised that turned out not to be the case.

However, you've made yourself clear and I have nothing else to say except (and this adds nothing to my argument it's purely a personal comment) that I'm glad I live in a country that prevents people from being so publicly hateful. There are limits to what's acceptable even in the context of the freedom of expression/speech. An Ad stating that people are gay cannot cause the same level of offence that an Ad implying that homosexuality is a disease/choice/state of mind that can be 'cured', can cause. I think the ban was justified.

I already gave my justifications before. Here, I was simply stating that I agree with the US law (or at least what I think the law is). I wasn't saying the law was good because it was the law, I was saying that I thought the law was good so if you wanted to know what I believed you could just consult the law.

I'm curious to know why you thought I would want the government to censor that. Was I really not clear on my view before? I mean, what else was I supposed to have meant when I said, "If you make the government ban hateful speech then I think you give the government too much power. It's better to attack the hate through other means. ...I would love for them to stop doing these things, but I would hate for the government to force them to stop." ?