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I'm a 28 year old bisexual in a firmly committed 9-year relationship with my same-sex partner. My best friend is a soon-to-be 23 year old gay man--much younger than me, but very smart and caring, and I adore him. Most of the time, we get along spectacularly--we don't like the same things very often, but that just gives us more to "teach" each other, and we definitely agree on politics. At least, most of the time. Which brings me to last night.
We were discussing free speech and hate speech, and my friend (who has a deep admiration for pretty much anything European) said that he thinks the USA should institute the same kind of laws that many European countries have, and ban "hate speech" outright. He came right out and said that anyone who says the word "fag" should go to jail--including gay people who are trying to reclaim the word. His comment was, "If they're stupid enough to use that word, they deserve to go to jail."
I was just..aghast. At first I tried to explain to him that, if we allow the government to ban "hate speech", we will have no way of ensuring *which* speech is deemed hate speech and which speech is not. I told him that with the USA's record of electing conservatives as often as liberals, the definition of "hate speech" could change to something that would restrict *our* rights. The word "Fundie" could be banned as hate speech, or "ChristiaNazi", or "Religious Reich", or any of the thousands of terms that many liberals and/or atheists (both and and I are atheists) use to describe fanatically religious people. I told him that the only way we can protect *our* right to speak out against those we oppose was to make sure that the First Amendment stayed intact for *everyone*. Hate crimes are one thing--they do more damage than a "normal" crime, so they should be punished more harshly. But suppressing speech is a horrible idea. Give the government the power to ban speech, and the government will eventually ban dissent. I thought that when I explained what could happen, he'd understand how dangerous it is to oppress speech.
It didn't work--in fact, he got angrier. He says that there's no logical reason to think that banning hate speech would lead to anything more than people not being allowed to call other people hateful slurs anymore. He is absolutely convinced that banning hate speech would be the best thing for the USA, and after arguing with him for about 20 minutes, we were both so angry that it almost wrecked our friendship. I think that he thinks I'm a traitor to the "cause", that I'm not a "good gay person", but the thought of giving the government the power to tell people what they're allowed to say is horrifying to me, and it's an issue I feel strongly about all the way down to my bones.
So I guess what I'm looking for is feedback from others in our community. What do you think? How can I mend this with him? I don't want to lose my friend, but I think he's 100% horrifically wrong, and I don't know how to prove to him how serious the consequences of such a law would be. I'm in a lot of emotional pain over this. :( :cry:
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