• hallucigenia
    +6

    Yes, it is. I'm assuming that by "hate speech" you mean "speech that is hateful". That's subjective, and people who are truly hateful are often adept at couching their hatred in niceties, anyway. "Hate speech" has everything to do with free speech. If I hate something, I should be able to say so. I should be able to explain why I hate something, whether you like it or not.

    Discrimination has nothing to do with speech, though, and it should be against the law. For example, I don't think that employers should be able to fire people because of their age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, etc.

    • blue2501
      +4

      I think South Park explained it best:

      If somebody kills somebody, it's a crime, but if somebody kills somebody of a different race, it's a hate crime. And we think that that is a savage hypocrisy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime? If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government? The motivation for a crime shouldn't affect the sentencing. It is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crime laws do is support the idea that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals are different, that we aren't the same. But instead we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes.

      • hallucigenia
        +4

        I don't think that the logic behind "hate crimes" is quite that facile, but I think I agree with South Park on this one. With hate crimes you have to get into motive, and I don't think that having bigotry as a motive should make a crime more or less illegal. I don't think that you get rid of bigotry by punishing it away.

    • CrazyDiamond
      +2

      I think countries that outlaw hate speech adopt the philosophy that hating groups of people is morally wrong all together, thus opinions about hating a group can be silenced. I think Germany outlaws hate speech. They are intimately familiar with the power of movements involved in the hatred of a group.

      • hallucigenia
        +2

        Yah. I understand why Germany does it, but I still think it's an over-reaction. Besides squelching speech, It also helps to give holocaust deniers credibility. "Hey, if I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist, why is the government trying to silence me?" And people go, "Wow, he's got a point!"

        • l23r
          0

          There's still a bunch of Nazis in Germany (and the USA and all over the world) and unless they fly a Swastika flag or walk down the street doing a Hitler salute while yelling "Heil Hitler", the government doesn't really do much.

          The issue with Holocaust denial is that it's beyond stupid. It's like saying gravity doesn't exist.

          • hallucigenia
            +2

            The issue with Holocaust denial is that it's beyond stupid. It's like saying gravity doesn't exist.

            I don't get it. Is it illegal to say that gravity doesn't exist?

          • l23r (edited 8 years ago)
            +2
            @hallucigenia -

            No. It's that spreading obviously false information is harmful to impressionable children. Now religion is still legal in Germany, but that's another story, heh. Even East Germany didn't outright ban religion. They still thought that people had the right to think almost any crazy thought they wanted.