I'm fairly certain there is a balance, that does not require molly coddling you but at the same time does not also force you to live in fear of torture. It is not one or the other.
Doubtful, since I believe the hate speech you'd prefer to allow is often equally as harmful as torture, if far more insidious. I'll keep this focused on LGBT since that's the scope of this thread, but it certainly affects other groups of people as well. Creating an environment where hate speech is condoned (which isn't even touching on countries where it's encouraged, like Russia) allows the populace to get comfortable using words to hurt others. Gay teens have absurdly high suicide rates generally because of minority stress, and the effects of minority stress compound as the stressors increase. Although I highly doubt there are any truly accurate studies, I would not be surprised in the least to learn that Russia has higher suicide and depression rates in LGBT youth than in North America. The bottom line is that when you allow (or encourage, obviously) verbal hate towards a group, you're creating an environment where increasing stressors are an inevitable reality, the consequences of which are serious.
I get why freedom of all speech is an important ideal, but the reality is that ideal creates an environment where LGBT youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide. Torture is not the only harm one person can do to another, and if being mollycoddled brings down the suicide rates of LGBT youth, I'll consider it an acceptable way to win. Canada's hate speech laws may not be the best way of solving the problem, but at least we're making the attempt. In a world where Russias are more common than Canadas, even making that attempt is incredible.
Since I don't know, what is the suicide rate of gay teens in Canada Vs. in the US and how does that relate to the suicide rates on non-gay teens in the same?
One would imagine such an ideology would not need a law to keep people away, but instead would repulse people on its own merit.
"One would imagine"? Why are you speaking as if about hypothetical scenarios? Neo-nazi groups do in fact exist.
Of course they do. According to wikipedia though, the largest Neo nazi group in the US is a whopping 400 members strong (The Anti Defamation League puts it simply at "several hundred"). I'm simply noting that if you let groups make fools of themselves on the public stage, people are largely more than capable of ostracizing moronic asshats without the assistence of additional laws
Of course they do. According to wikipedia though, the largest Neo nazi group in the US is a whopping 400 members strong (The Anti Defamation League puts it simply at "several hundred"). I'm simply noting that if you let groups make fools of themselves on the public stage, people are largely more than capable of ostracizing moronic asshats without the assistence of additional laws
There are a variety of historical reasons why neo-Nazi movements in America have limited numbers. One of the big ones is because we have our own native anti-minority groups.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Since I don't know, what is the suicide rate of gay teens in Canada Vs. in the US and how does that relate to the suicide rates on non-gay teens in the same?
You're unlikely to find reliable numbers regardless because of the exceptional amount of estimation and self-reporting bias involved, most studies outright admit that reliable numbers are next to impossible. Particularly because sexual orientation isn't on death certificates and studies need to rely on participants self-reporting not only orientation, but also suicide attempts.
But I've seen estimations of 28% in Canada and anywhere from 30-40% in America for LGBT suicide rates, which is typically estimated at 3-4 times higher than heterosexual youth suicides.
Of course they do. According to wikipedia though, the largest Neo nazi group in the US is a whopping 400 members strong (The Anti Defamation League puts it simply at "several hundred"). I'm simply noting that if you let groups make fools of themselves on the public stage, people are largely more than capable of ostracizing moronic asshats without the assistence of additional laws
There are a variety of historical reasons why neo-Nazi movements in America have limited numbers. One of the big ones is because we have our own native anti-minority groups.
True, but even the KKK is seeing hard times. With an estimated membership of 6000 people nationwide that puts it at the esteemed position of ALMOST making up 0.002% of the nations population. Even the old and established hate groups have been largely kicked to the wayside by the nation at large.
To put the tininess of that number in perspective, in 2012 there were 4,007,000 births, the lowest number in over a decade. This meant that on average, more babies were born every day last year (10,978) than the KKK has members.
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True, but even the KKK is seeing hard times. With an estimated membership of 6000 people nationwide that puts it at the esteemed position of ALMOST making up 0.002% of the nations population. Even the old and established hate groups have been largely kicked to the wayside by the nation at large.
To put the tininess of that number in perspective, in 2012 there were 4,007,000 births, the lowest number in over a decade. This meant that on average, more babies were born every day last year (10,978) than the KKK has members.
Sure, but that's not unexpected. The biggest reason explicitly anti-minority groups are so marginal in the United States is because, throughout the nation's history, one or the other major political parties has tacitly accommodated them. In the US, you don't have to be a Klan member or a soldier of the American National Socialist Party to express anti-minority views; a significant portion of the Republican Party (far, far from the majority, but still a significant section) holds and expresses those views, and you can fit in just fine with them instead.
Combine that with the presence of native far-right groups, and the fact that those people who just fetishize Nazi imagery have other options, and you have a situation where explicit neo-fascism can be small while still commanding a much larger percentage of the population than it appears.
But that isn't true in most other countries, and probably shouldn't be.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Of course they do. According to wikipedia though, the largest Neo nazi group in the US is a whopping 400 members strong (The Anti Defamation League puts it simply at "several hundred"). I'm simply noting that if you let groups make fools of themselves on the public stage, people are largely more than capable of ostracizing moronic asshats without the assistence of additional laws
"Let them make fools of themselves" didn't really work out for Germany.
It currently isn't working for LGBT Russians.
The issue in Russia is not a failure of freedom of speech laws, though, it's a failure of other laws.
Of course they do. According to wikipedia though, the largest Neo nazi group in the US is a whopping 400 members strong (The Anti Defamation League puts it simply at "several hundred"). I'm simply noting that if you let groups make fools of themselves on the public stage, people are largely more than capable of ostracizing moronic asshats without the assistence of additional laws
"Let them make fools of themselves" didn't really work out for Germany.
It currently isn't working for LGBT Russians.
If a population doesn't agree with a law, then the law is moot anyway. The Germans came to power because THE PEOPLE let them.
Additionally, i posted an interesting article a little ways up about corrective rape in South Africa. South Africa actually allows Gay Marriage. It's in their constitution. And yet homosexuals are not protected from widespread rape, harassment, and contempt. They are not protected by law (with many cases being forgotten or dismissed).
Lets look at Russia now. There is no public support for a law protecting LGBT members of society. If one was put in place, do you think that public opinion would suddenly reverse? Do you think that people's actions would change? Do you think the law would even be enforced?
In a country where LGBT people are accepted, hate speech laws are largely moot because society will shun those who mean them harm. In a society that shuns LGBT people, hate speech laws lack the backing or will to stop those who mean to harm them.
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Doubtful, since I believe the hate speech you'd prefer to allow is often equally as harmful as torture, if far more insidious.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's cut back on the hyperbole. I think you'll find that the rate of psychiatric problems among survivors of torture is just a wee bit higher than that among non-tortured gay people.
Creating an environment where hate speech is condoned (which isn't even touching on countries where it's encouraged, like Russia) allows the populace to get comfortable using words to hurt others.
To "condone" is to tacitly approve. We don't condone hate speech; we allow it. And creating an environment where all speech is allowed allows the populace to get comfortable using words to resolve their differences.
Gay teens have absurdly high suicide rates generally because of minority stress, and the effects of minority stress compound as the stressors increase. Although I highly doubt there are any truly accurate studies, I would not be surprised in the least to learn that Russia has higher suicide and depression rates in LGBT youth than in North America. The bottom line is that when you allow (or encourage, obviously) verbal hate towards a group, you're creating an environment where increasing stressors are an inevitable reality, the consequences of which are serious.
Without meaning to diminish the issue of stress among gay youth, which I acknowledge is a real problem, you rapidly run into a problem if you try to regulate any speech that causes stress to someone. If a prominent politician speaks in favor of strong gun control legislation, this is likely to deeply disturb some people in the camo-and-bunker crowd. Is the politician committing an act of hate speech against those people? Hate speech is generally defined as something to the effect of speech derogatory to a race, sex, orientation, religion, or other "intrinsic" personal quality. So right-wing survivalists could not qualify as victims of hate speech. But surely their stress is just as real even if their concerns are political rather than personal and you don't agree with those politics. Surely for them to suicide would be just as much a tragedy - and indeed suicide is very common among their set as well.
So we have a problem of trying to find a criterion that, applied evenhandedly, would target the hate speech you want to get rid of without getting rid of all kinds of other speech. And we don't want the government to get into the business of simply arbitrating which speech is good and which bad. I think that real solutions to the problem of gay stress have to lie outside the realm of regulating speech content. We can make gays feel safer by improving enforcement of the laws to reduce the rates of crimes against them - crimes which do include some speech acts like intimidation and harassment that are directly and provably injurious.
But even that is just a negative solution, attacking another particular stressor. The root cause of the stress isn't any one stressor, but the overall feeling of abnormalcy that is intolerable to an animal as social as Homo sapiens. Straight white men don't acquire long-term stress problems when they're getting the shame treatment from the radical left or even when they're being threatened with physical violence by the Black Panthers, because they still feel like they're normal in society: they don't have this stigma that makes the people around them look at them differently or walk on eggshells. Building normalcy for gay people is going to require more than just stressor removal (and if it can be normalized, the stressors will stop being so stressful anyway). It needs a paradoxical-sounding combination of increasing visibility and decreasing impact. Gay protagonists in TV and movies whose sexuality only comes up when relevant rather than being their defining character trait. Gay leaders - not leaders of the gay community, but leaders of the whole community who happen to be gay. Gay friends and coworkers who worry about jobs and student loans and mortgages just like everybody else.
And the good news is that all this is happening. Support for gay marriage is way up, of course. Violence against gay people is down. And I don't have the stats for suicide on hand, but I'm confident that's down as well. Change is coming, and fast, and all without touching people's legal right to free expression.
Canada's hate speech laws may not be the best way of solving the problem, but at least we're making the attempt.
No, even if you accept the principle of hate speech legislation, special extrajudicial star courts are not the way to go about enforcing such law (or any kind of law).
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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True, but even the KKK is seeing hard times. With an estimated membership of 6000 people nationwide that puts it at the esteemed position of ALMOST making up 0.002% of the nations population. Even the old and established hate groups have been largely kicked to the wayside by the nation at large.
To put the tininess of that number in perspective, in 2012 there were 4,007,000 births, the lowest number in over a decade. This meant that on average, more babies were born every day last year (10,978) than the KKK has members.
Sure, but that's not unexpected. The biggest reason explicitly anti-minority groups are so marginal in the United States is because, throughout the nation's history, one or the other major political parties has tacitly accommodated them. In the US, you don't have to be a Klan member or a soldier of the American National Socialist Party to express anti-minority views; a significant portion of the Republican Party (far, far from the majority, but still a significant section) holds and expresses those views, and you can fit in just fine with them instead.
Combine that with the presence of native far-right groups, and the fact that those people who just fetishize Nazi imagery have other options, and you have a situation where explicit neo-fascism can be small while still commanding a much larger percentage of the population than it appears.
But that isn't true in most other countries, and probably shouldn't be.
True, but getting pulled into a major political party also forces one to mellow ones message (at least publically). I mean, yes there are a lot of homophobic Republicans, but they wouldn't dare say anything even close to what you see on Yahoo Comments. Thus the issue is them being an impediment, not actually producing the hateful legislation and speech that we're discussing laws against.
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If a population doesn't agree with a law, then the law is moot anyway. The Germans came to power because THE PEOPLE let them.
Additionally, i posted an interesting article a little ways up about corrective rape in South Africa. South Africa actually allows Gay Marriage. It's in their constitution. And yet homosexuals are not protected from widespread rape, harassment, and contempt. They are not protected by law (with many cases being forgotten or dismissed).
Lets look at Russia now. There is no public support for a law protecting LGBT members of society. If one was put in place, do you think that public opinion would suddenly reverse? Do you think that people's actions would change? Do you think the law would even be enforced?
In a country where LGBT people are accepted, hate speech laws are largely moot because society will shun those who mean them harm. In a society that shuns LGBT people, hate speech laws lack the backing or will to stop those who mean to harm them.
There's plenty of historical precedent for laws of this type, laws which weren't supported by the population, nevertheless being pushed through and becoming successful through persistent government pressure. Think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the South; obviously majority support was never there, but we don't have lynchings anymore.
True, but getting pulled into a major political party also forces one to mellow ones message (at least publically). I mean, yes there are a lot of homophobic Republicans, but they wouldn't dare say anything even close to what you see on Yahoo Comments. Thus the issue is them being an impediment, not actually producing the hateful legislation and speech that we're discussing laws against.
This is getting a little bit off-topic, but certainly they do create that kind of hateful legislation and speech; it just doesn't get anywhere because there isn't majority support. But that's not to say it doesn't exist.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
If a population doesn't agree with a law, then the law is moot anyway. The Germans came to power because THE PEOPLE let them.
Additionally, i posted an interesting article a little ways up about corrective rape in South Africa. South Africa actually allows Gay Marriage. It's in their constitution. And yet homosexuals are not protected from widespread rape, harassment, and contempt. They are not protected by law (with many cases being forgotten or dismissed).
Lets look at Russia now. There is no public support for a law protecting LGBT members of society. If one was put in place, do you think that public opinion would suddenly reverse? Do you think that people's actions would change? Do you think the law would even be enforced?
In a country where LGBT people are accepted, hate speech laws are largely moot because society will shun those who mean them harm. In a society that shuns LGBT people, hate speech laws lack the backing or will to stop those who mean to harm them.
There's plenty of historical precedent for laws of this type, laws which weren't supported by the population, nevertheless being pushed through and becoming successful through persistent government pressure. Think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the South; obviously majority support was never there, but we don't have lynchings anymore.
This may sounds silly, but you don't happen to have any polling data from that era, do you? I actually tried to look up and check whether racist attitudes in the South had softened prior to 1964, but I haven't been able to find any information in either direction. Obviously this would be a pretty good example if indeed opposition remained heavy in the south at the time of the bill's passage.
True, but getting pulled into a major political party also forces one to mellow ones message (at least publically). I mean, yes there are a lot of homophobic Republicans, but they wouldn't dare say anything even close to what you see on Yahoo Comments. Thus the issue is them being an impediment, not actually producing the hateful legislation and speech that we're discussing laws against.
This is getting a little bit off-topic, but certainly they do create that kind of hateful legislation and speech; it just doesn't get anywhere because there isn't majority support. But that's not to say it doesn't exist.
...Isn't this an example of society keeping racists marginalized?
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This may sounds silly, but you don't happen to have any polling data from that era, do you? I actually tried to look up and check whether racist attitudes in the South had softened prior to 1964, but I haven't been able to find any information in either direction. Obviously this would be a pretty good example if indeed opposition remained heavy in the south at the time of the bill's passage.
I literally just googled "civil rights act poll" and found this in two clicks.
Gallup in 1964 found that 80% of white Southerners were opposed to the Civil Rights Act.
Yes, they really were racist.
(And yes, a significant number of them still are.)
Doubtful, since I believe the hate speech you'd prefer to allow is often equally as harmful as torture, if far more insidious.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's cut back on the hyperbole. I think you'll find that the rate of psychiatric problems among survivors of torture is just a wee bit higher than that among non-tortured gay people.
Apologies. Yes, on a one-to-one comparison, the effects of torture are worse. My intent was not to diminish that, but to speak to how far-reaching the effects of hate speech are when compared to torture. As abhorrent as that torture is, I feel it's eclipsed by the tens of thousands of LGBT youth feeling the psychological effects of discrimination resulting in attempted suicide.
Creating an environment where hate speech is condoned (which isn't even touching on countries where it's encouraged, like Russia) allows the populace to get comfortable using words to hurt others.
To "condone" is to tacitly approve. We don't condone hate speech; we allow it.
Gay teens have absurdly high suicide rates generally because of minority stress, and the effects of minority stress compound as the stressors increase. Although I highly doubt there are any truly accurate studies, I would not be surprised in the least to learn that Russia has higher suicide and depression rates in LGBT youth than in North America. The bottom line is that when you allow (or encourage, obviously) verbal hate towards a group, you're creating an environment where increasing stressors are an inevitable reality, the consequences of which are serious.
Without meaning to diminish the issue of stress among gay youth, which I acknowledge is a real problem, you rapidly run into a problem if you try to regulate any speech that causes stress to someone. If a prominent politician speaks in favor of strong gun control legislation, this is likely to deeply disturb some people in the camo-and-bunker crowd. Is the politician committing an act of hate speech against those people? Hate speech is generally defined as something to the effect of speech derogatory to a race, sex, orientation, religion, or other "intrinsic" personal quality. So right-wing survivalists could not qualify as victims of hate speech. But surely their stress is just as real even if their concerns are political rather than personal and you don't agree with those politics. Surely for them to suicide would be just as much a tragedy - and indeed suicide is very common among their set as well.
I don't think gun lovers potentially having restricted access to firearms is quite in the same stressor-league as the consistent and longterm devaluation of self many LGBT youth go through. One is being told you can't have what you want, the other is being told you're different and lesser-than often enough that you believe yourself worth less than those around you.
I know you said that you didn't want to diminish the issue of minority stress on LGBT youth, but I think you kind of did anyway.
And the good news is that all this is happening. Support for gay marriage is way up, of course. Violence against gay people is down. And I don't have the stats for suicide on hand, but I'm confident that's down as well. Change is coming, and fast, and all without touching people's legal right to free expression.
Good for us, but I think what's happening in Russia is a sobering counterpoint.
Canada's hate speech laws may not be the best way of solving the problem, but at least we're making the attempt.
No, even if you accept the principle of hate speech legislation, special extrajudicial star courts are not the way to go about enforcing such law (or any kind of law).
No, perhaps not. But again, I'm appreciative of the attempt to address hate speech.
This may sounds silly, but you don't happen to have any polling data from that era, do you? I actually tried to look up and check whether racist attitudes in the South had softened prior to 1964, but I haven't been able to find any information in either direction. Obviously this would be a pretty good example if indeed opposition remained heavy in the south at the time of the bill's passage.
In addition to the poll erimir mentioned, you can look at the "massive resistance" promised by white Southern politicians, the continued election of explicitly racist and pro-segregation governors and senators well after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the Deep South's vote for Barry Goldwater in 1964 (the first time it had voted for a Republican ever) because he opposed the Civil Rights Act.
And to drive home just how dramatic that last shift was: in 1956, Adlai Stevenson (the Democrat) won 58% of the vote in Mississippi, despite losing the national popular vote by fifteen points. In 1964, Goldwater won 87% of the vote in Mississippi, and he lost nationally by 23 points. Antipathy to LBJ in the Deep South after the Civil Rights Act was so great that he didn't even get on the ballot in Alabama. This despite the fact that Johnson was the first Southern president in over a century.
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...Isn't this an example of society keeping racists marginalized?
But again, the United States is not a typical example, and we pay all sorts of prices for having our system be this way.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
This may sounds silly, but you don't happen to have any polling data from that era, do you? I actually tried to look up and check whether racist attitudes in the South had softened prior to 1964, but I haven't been able to find any information in either direction. Obviously this would be a pretty good example if indeed opposition remained heavy in the south at the time of the bill's passage.
I literally just googled "civil rights act poll" and found this in two clicks.
Gallup in 1964 found that 80% of white Southerners were opposed to the Civil Rights Act.
Yes, they really were racist.
(And yes, a significant number of them still are.)
That's really embarrassing. I searched "civil rights act 1964 popularity" and my responses were a lot less helpful. Apologies on that, and I agree that in this case, the law really did make a large difference.
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But again, the United States is not a typical example, and we pay all sorts of prices for having our system be this way.
Fair enough. I had misunderstood what you had meant by that.
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To protect someone's legal right to do something is not the same thing as accepting that thing or letting it happen. I don't think all the people who stand up for gay rights in America would appreciate being told they just let hate speech happen - speaking as one of them, I know I don't. We just don't jump from "This is a problem to be solved" to "The government should solve this problem".
I don't think gun lovers potentially having restricted access to firearms is quite in the same stressor-league as the consistent and longterm devaluation of self many LGBT youth go through. One is being told you can't have what you want, the other is being told you're different and lesser-than often enough that you believe yourself worth less than those around you.
I know you said that you didn't want to diminish the issue of minority stress on LGBT youth, but I think you kind of did anyway.
I am disturbed by your casual and callous dismissal of the survivalist's concerns, especially in a thread where you're theoretically advocating greater empathy for people who may think and behave differently than you do. After all, one might just as easily dismiss anti-gay legislation as "being told you can't have what you want", homosexuality being fundamentally an issue of desire. But of course, gay people don't see it that way. They have a different perspective, and because of that perspective, "being told you can't have what you want" means a lot more to them than just that, leading to stress and psychological problems up to and including suicide. Their mind makes the pain real.
I'm not trying to cheapen that pain. On the contrary, I'm trying to get you to acknowledge the reality of the survivalists' pain. Because they also feel themselves marginalized and persecuted, and, right or wrong, their mind makes the pain real too. They harm themselves just as much whether you agree with them or not. I'm not asking you to agree with them. For my part, I think they're a pack of paranoid lunatics. But agreement is beside the point. Your argument is that we should ban hate speech against gays because it will hopefully prevent suicides. And I highly doubt that you intend there to be any exceptions for those who genuinely disagree with the morality of homosexuality. But we might be just as hopeful that banning leftish speech will prevent some of the suicides of these people who really think Big Government is coming to get them. And likewise, we shouldn't make an exception for those who genuinely disagree with them.
The pain is real. The suicides are real. The suicides are allegedly preventable. Those are the relevant facts in this argument.
Good for us, but I think what's happening in Russia is a sobering counterpoint.
There's not a lot we can do about Russia except continue to improve ourselves and provide a better example. Liberty has a way of leaking across borders eventually, especially in this Internet era. And I know this is not enough. A free Russia in twenty years does no good to a gay Russian dying in an alley tonight. But we can't invade them and subject them to a tough de-Nazification program the way we did Germany. We simply do not have the power to help everyone.
Comparing the stress a homosexual teen feels in comparison to a gun nut is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long time. You act as if homosexuality is a desire, a choice, as it is with owning a gun.
The two aren't even close to the same, on many levels. For one, a great majority of people on the planet NEED intimacy. A gun nuts need for greater firepower is not the same as a homosexuals need for intimacy. The difference here is need and want.
You don't NEED a gun. A human being DOES need intimacy.
Another problem I have with that comparison is choice. A gay person cannot just choose to be straight. If you think thats how it works than you really need to get off the computer chair and go explore the world a little, because you're a bit of a shut in.
A gun nut can choose to own a gun. They are subjecting themselves to criticism (if at all). Theres nothing fundamentally different in owning a gun and not owning a gun besides rhetoric of a government takeover.
Lastly, I don't remember fellow citizens stringing up gun owners because they own guns. Maybe I'm missing something here, but hate violence towards gays is a lot of the reason why they feel stress. The only stress I've known gun owners to have is the ones they subject themselves to by reading right-wing propaganda (they're comin for our GUNS!).
IWasteMoneyOnCardboard, you've ignored the bulk of my argument. I did take pains to justify why the comparison is valid in this particular discussion in spite of all the differences you may find. Please go back and read what I wrote again.
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I didn't ignore the bulk of your argument. In fact I couldn't disagree with your logic more. Specifically when you say that banning hate speech against gays is the same as banning leftist speech. They're not even close. The slippery slope is a logical fallacy.
For one, when a "survivalist" commits suicide, it's not because leftists who think they're gun nuts create an overwhelming lack of self-worth in the "survivalist."
You mistake hate speech to be the same as passionate speech. Whereas I think anyone that wants to own a tank is a ****ing lunatic, I highly doubt my thoughts on that is going to cause a tank owner to commit suicide. Even if everyone in the world thinks the guy is a lunatic, the guy could simply not own a tank, he has that choice.
Then take a look at Russia, WBC, etc., the constant claim that homosexuals will meet a fiery doom, I've heard homophobic people say that "gays aren't even real people."
As someone who knows many survivalists and gay people, I find the comparison utterly lacking.
It may not be your intent, but are diminishing the issue of gay teen suicide by relating it to the "stress" that "survivalists" feel from... I guess I don't get this. I live in the Midwest like you do, what the hell are you even talking about?? Survivalist stress. That's ridiculous. I'd expect such a logical fallacy from commons, but you BS? Come on.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
This is fun!
You know the same laws you want to create to stop people from talking about how bad it is to be gay could have been used to stop supporters of gay rights from even getting off the ground right? Free speech is what allows change to happen.
Now there is a difference between speech in general and bullying. There is a big difference between walking up to Jim and berating him for being gay, (or being anti-gay, or being black or saying ****** once), and walking up to a podium or street corner and saying that being gay in general is bad or saying that using the N-word is bad for everyone. One of these is targeted at an individual, it's called harassment. The other is free speech.
You know the same laws you want to create to stop people from talking about how bad it is to be gay could have been used to stop supporters of gay rights from even getting off the ground right? Free speech is what allows change to happen.
Now there is a difference between speech in general and bullying. There is a big difference between walking up to Jim and berating him for being gay, (or being anti-gay, or being black or saying ****** once), and walking up to a podium or street corner and saying that being gay in general is bad or saying that using the N-word is bad for everyone. One of these is targeted at an individual, it's called harassment. The other is free speech.
I don't really see how laws against hate speech could have been used to block the gay rights movement, no. They're typically crafted specifically to avoid being used that way.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
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Since I don't know, what is the suicide rate of gay teens in Canada Vs. in the US and how does that relate to the suicide rates on non-gay teens in the same?
There are a variety of historical reasons why neo-Nazi movements in America have limited numbers. One of the big ones is because we have our own native anti-minority groups.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
You're unlikely to find reliable numbers regardless because of the exceptional amount of estimation and self-reporting bias involved, most studies outright admit that reliable numbers are next to impossible. Particularly because sexual orientation isn't on death certificates and studies need to rely on participants self-reporting not only orientation, but also suicide attempts.
But I've seen estimations of 28% in Canada and anywhere from 30-40% in America for LGBT suicide rates, which is typically estimated at 3-4 times higher than heterosexual youth suicides.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
True, but even the KKK is seeing hard times. With an estimated membership of 6000 people nationwide that puts it at the esteemed position of ALMOST making up 0.002% of the nations population. Even the old and established hate groups have been largely kicked to the wayside by the nation at large.
To put the tininess of that number in perspective, in 2012 there were 4,007,000 births, the lowest number in over a decade. This meant that on average, more babies were born every day last year (10,978) than the KKK has members.
Sure, but that's not unexpected. The biggest reason explicitly anti-minority groups are so marginal in the United States is because, throughout the nation's history, one or the other major political parties has tacitly accommodated them. In the US, you don't have to be a Klan member or a soldier of the American National Socialist Party to express anti-minority views; a significant portion of the Republican Party (far, far from the majority, but still a significant section) holds and expresses those views, and you can fit in just fine with them instead.
Combine that with the presence of native far-right groups, and the fact that those people who just fetishize Nazi imagery have other options, and you have a situation where explicit neo-fascism can be small while still commanding a much larger percentage of the population than it appears.
But that isn't true in most other countries, and probably shouldn't be.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
The issue in Russia is not a failure of freedom of speech laws, though, it's a failure of other laws.
If a population doesn't agree with a law, then the law is moot anyway. The Germans came to power because THE PEOPLE let them.
Additionally, i posted an interesting article a little ways up about corrective rape in South Africa. South Africa actually allows Gay Marriage. It's in their constitution. And yet homosexuals are not protected from widespread rape, harassment, and contempt. They are not protected by law (with many cases being forgotten or dismissed).
Lets look at Russia now. There is no public support for a law protecting LGBT members of society. If one was put in place, do you think that public opinion would suddenly reverse? Do you think that people's actions would change? Do you think the law would even be enforced?
In a country where LGBT people are accepted, hate speech laws are largely moot because society will shun those who mean them harm. In a society that shuns LGBT people, hate speech laws lack the backing or will to stop those who mean to harm them.
To "condone" is to tacitly approve. We don't condone hate speech; we allow it. And creating an environment where all speech is allowed allows the populace to get comfortable using words to resolve their differences.
Without meaning to diminish the issue of stress among gay youth, which I acknowledge is a real problem, you rapidly run into a problem if you try to regulate any speech that causes stress to someone. If a prominent politician speaks in favor of strong gun control legislation, this is likely to deeply disturb some people in the camo-and-bunker crowd. Is the politician committing an act of hate speech against those people? Hate speech is generally defined as something to the effect of speech derogatory to a race, sex, orientation, religion, or other "intrinsic" personal quality. So right-wing survivalists could not qualify as victims of hate speech. But surely their stress is just as real even if their concerns are political rather than personal and you don't agree with those politics. Surely for them to suicide would be just as much a tragedy - and indeed suicide is very common among their set as well.
So we have a problem of trying to find a criterion that, applied evenhandedly, would target the hate speech you want to get rid of without getting rid of all kinds of other speech. And we don't want the government to get into the business of simply arbitrating which speech is good and which bad. I think that real solutions to the problem of gay stress have to lie outside the realm of regulating speech content. We can make gays feel safer by improving enforcement of the laws to reduce the rates of crimes against them - crimes which do include some speech acts like intimidation and harassment that are directly and provably injurious.
But even that is just a negative solution, attacking another particular stressor. The root cause of the stress isn't any one stressor, but the overall feeling of abnormalcy that is intolerable to an animal as social as Homo sapiens. Straight white men don't acquire long-term stress problems when they're getting the shame treatment from the radical left or even when they're being threatened with physical violence by the Black Panthers, because they still feel like they're normal in society: they don't have this stigma that makes the people around them look at them differently or walk on eggshells. Building normalcy for gay people is going to require more than just stressor removal (and if it can be normalized, the stressors will stop being so stressful anyway). It needs a paradoxical-sounding combination of increasing visibility and decreasing impact. Gay protagonists in TV and movies whose sexuality only comes up when relevant rather than being their defining character trait. Gay leaders - not leaders of the gay community, but leaders of the whole community who happen to be gay. Gay friends and coworkers who worry about jobs and student loans and mortgages just like everybody else.
And the good news is that all this is happening. Support for gay marriage is way up, of course. Violence against gay people is down. And I don't have the stats for suicide on hand, but I'm confident that's down as well. Change is coming, and fast, and all without touching people's legal right to free expression.
No, even if you accept the principle of hate speech legislation, special extrajudicial star courts are not the way to go about enforcing such law (or any kind of law).
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
True, but getting pulled into a major political party also forces one to mellow ones message (at least publically). I mean, yes there are a lot of homophobic Republicans, but they wouldn't dare say anything even close to what you see on Yahoo Comments. Thus the issue is them being an impediment, not actually producing the hateful legislation and speech that we're discussing laws against.
Sure, but the failure of those laws is encouraged by an environment which fosters hate.
There's plenty of historical precedent for laws of this type, laws which weren't supported by the population, nevertheless being pushed through and becoming successful through persistent government pressure. Think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the South; obviously majority support was never there, but we don't have lynchings anymore.
This is getting a little bit off-topic, but certainly they do create that kind of hateful legislation and speech; it just doesn't get anywhere because there isn't majority support. But that's not to say it doesn't exist.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
This may sounds silly, but you don't happen to have any polling data from that era, do you? I actually tried to look up and check whether racist attitudes in the South had softened prior to 1964, but I haven't been able to find any information in either direction. Obviously this would be a pretty good example if indeed opposition remained heavy in the south at the time of the bill's passage.
...Isn't this an example of society keeping racists marginalized?
Gallup in 1964 found that 80% of white Southerners were opposed to the Civil Rights Act.
Yes, they really were racist.
(And yes, a significant number of them still are.)
Apologies. Yes, on a one-to-one comparison, the effects of torture are worse. My intent was not to diminish that, but to speak to how far-reaching the effects of hate speech are when compared to torture. As abhorrent as that torture is, I feel it's eclipsed by the tens of thousands of LGBT youth feeling the psychological effects of discrimination resulting in attempted suicide.
There's no difference, to condone is to allow or accept a poor behavior. By allowing hate speech, you're looking the other way and letting it happen.
Is that what's happening?
I don't think gun lovers potentially having restricted access to firearms is quite in the same stressor-league as the consistent and longterm devaluation of self many LGBT youth go through. One is being told you can't have what you want, the other is being told you're different and lesser-than often enough that you believe yourself worth less than those around you.
I know you said that you didn't want to diminish the issue of minority stress on LGBT youth, but I think you kind of did anyway.
Good for us, but I think what's happening in Russia is a sobering counterpoint.
No, perhaps not. But again, I'm appreciative of the attempt to address hate speech.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
In addition to the poll erimir mentioned, you can look at the "massive resistance" promised by white Southern politicians, the continued election of explicitly racist and pro-segregation governors and senators well after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the Deep South's vote for Barry Goldwater in 1964 (the first time it had voted for a Republican ever) because he opposed the Civil Rights Act.
And to drive home just how dramatic that last shift was: in 1956, Adlai Stevenson (the Democrat) won 58% of the vote in Mississippi, despite losing the national popular vote by fifteen points. In 1964, Goldwater won 87% of the vote in Mississippi, and he lost nationally by 23 points. Antipathy to LBJ in the Deep South after the Civil Rights Act was so great that he didn't even get on the ballot in Alabama. This despite the fact that Johnson was the first Southern president in over a century.
But again, the United States is not a typical example, and we pay all sorts of prices for having our system be this way.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
That's really embarrassing. I searched "civil rights act 1964 popularity" and my responses were a lot less helpful. Apologies on that, and I agree that in this case, the law really did make a large difference.
Fair enough. I had misunderstood what you had meant by that.
Look at the history of free speech in the West over the past few centuries.
I am disturbed by your casual and callous dismissal of the survivalist's concerns, especially in a thread where you're theoretically advocating greater empathy for people who may think and behave differently than you do. After all, one might just as easily dismiss anti-gay legislation as "being told you can't have what you want", homosexuality being fundamentally an issue of desire. But of course, gay people don't see it that way. They have a different perspective, and because of that perspective, "being told you can't have what you want" means a lot more to them than just that, leading to stress and psychological problems up to and including suicide. Their mind makes the pain real.
I'm not trying to cheapen that pain. On the contrary, I'm trying to get you to acknowledge the reality of the survivalists' pain. Because they also feel themselves marginalized and persecuted, and, right or wrong, their mind makes the pain real too. They harm themselves just as much whether you agree with them or not. I'm not asking you to agree with them. For my part, I think they're a pack of paranoid lunatics. But agreement is beside the point. Your argument is that we should ban hate speech against gays because it will hopefully prevent suicides. And I highly doubt that you intend there to be any exceptions for those who genuinely disagree with the morality of homosexuality. But we might be just as hopeful that banning leftish speech will prevent some of the suicides of these people who really think Big Government is coming to get them. And likewise, we shouldn't make an exception for those who genuinely disagree with them.
The pain is real. The suicides are real. The suicides are allegedly preventable. Those are the relevant facts in this argument.
There's not a lot we can do about Russia except continue to improve ourselves and provide a better example. Liberty has a way of leaking across borders eventually, especially in this Internet era. And I know this is not enough. A free Russia in twenty years does no good to a gay Russian dying in an alley tonight. But we can't invade them and subject them to a tough de-Nazification program the way we did Germany. We simply do not have the power to help everyone.
If you had a toothache, and I removed all your teeth with pliers, would you be appreciative of my attempt to help?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
The two aren't even close to the same, on many levels. For one, a great majority of people on the planet NEED intimacy. A gun nuts need for greater firepower is not the same as a homosexuals need for intimacy. The difference here is need and want.
You don't NEED a gun. A human being DOES need intimacy.
Another problem I have with that comparison is choice. A gay person cannot just choose to be straight. If you think thats how it works than you really need to get off the computer chair and go explore the world a little, because you're a bit of a shut in.
A gun nut can choose to own a gun. They are subjecting themselves to criticism (if at all). Theres nothing fundamentally different in owning a gun and not owning a gun besides rhetoric of a government takeover.
Lastly, I don't remember fellow citizens stringing up gun owners because they own guns. Maybe I'm missing something here, but hate violence towards gays is a lot of the reason why they feel stress. The only stress I've known gun owners to have is the ones they subject themselves to by reading right-wing propaganda (they're comin for our GUNS!).
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
For one, when a "survivalist" commits suicide, it's not because leftists who think they're gun nuts create an overwhelming lack of self-worth in the "survivalist."
You mistake hate speech to be the same as passionate speech. Whereas I think anyone that wants to own a tank is a ****ing lunatic, I highly doubt my thoughts on that is going to cause a tank owner to commit suicide. Even if everyone in the world thinks the guy is a lunatic, the guy could simply not own a tank, he has that choice.
Then take a look at Russia, WBC, etc., the constant claim that homosexuals will meet a fiery doom, I've heard homophobic people say that "gays aren't even real people."
As someone who knows many survivalists and gay people, I find the comparison utterly lacking.
It may not be your intent, but are diminishing the issue of gay teen suicide by relating it to the "stress" that "survivalists" feel from... I guess I don't get this. I live in the Midwest like you do, what the hell are you even talking about?? Survivalist stress. That's ridiculous. I'd expect such a logical fallacy from commons, but you BS? Come on.
This is fun!
(Did I do it right?)
You know the same laws you want to create to stop people from talking about how bad it is to be gay could have been used to stop supporters of gay rights from even getting off the ground right? Free speech is what allows change to happen.
Now there is a difference between speech in general and bullying. There is a big difference between walking up to Jim and berating him for being gay, (or being anti-gay, or being black or saying ****** once), and walking up to a podium or street corner and saying that being gay in general is bad or saying that using the N-word is bad for everyone. One of these is targeted at an individual, it's called harassment. The other is free speech.
I don't really see how laws against hate speech could have been used to block the gay rights movement, no. They're typically crafted specifically to avoid being used that way.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.