i just kicked a drunk woman out of my hotel for calling my gay coworker a fag

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Racists should be allowed to speak their mind. When they do, the rest of us should be allowed to throw them out of hotels, post on the internet about it, and expect our peers and compatriots to buy us a beer or at least offer a congratulatory pat on the butt. This one's for you, Hoos.

kingkongvsgodzilla, Monday, 28 May 2007 16:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Ironically, if Hoos had just walked in on a drunk lady getting it in the ass from some dude and told them to stop it everyone on ILX would have been fine with it.

Eppy, Monday, 28 May 2007 17:30 (seventeen years ago) link

God forbid he should ask what tip her tho.

The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall, Monday, 28 May 2007 17:37 (seventeen years ago) link

"darraghmac what if because of believing quitney's headlines people started attacking you on the street?"

then their behaviour would be clearly illegal, and they should feel the force of the law.

"what do you think should be illegal, darraghmac, and why?"

actions, not words or thoughts.

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:34 (seventeen years ago) link

isn't speaking, writing, and publishing "words" an action?

max, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:36 (seventeen years ago) link

sry i just don't really see where you get to make the distinction between "actions" and "words." or "actions" and "thoughts" for that matter.

max, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:37 (seventeen years ago) link

i mean its not the THOUGHT of libel thats illegal--its the ACTION of publishing it.

max, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:40 (seventeen years ago) link

i think you just clarified the distinction for yrself

river wolf, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:44 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm not sure what i can add to that, actually- in a libel case, you have to prove material loss, as far as i know, certainly you have to bring more to the table that 'oh, i didn't like what he said"

btw, i don't condone racism, homophobia, nor that particular woman's behaviour.

and it's pretty irritating that i should feel that i even have to post that last line, but i guess that's the way threads are going today on ILX.

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:48 (seventeen years ago) link

do you think people should be allowed to deny the holocaust in Germany, Austria and other countries where that's illegal?

blueski, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link

sure!

river wolf, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:55 (seventeen years ago) link

don't mean this to be so interrogative, just curious to see if an exception can be found (xp)

blueski, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:56 (seventeen years ago) link

i wasn't kidding

river wolf, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:57 (seventeen years ago) link

in america the term 'hate speech' is synonymous with advocating laws to make 'hate speech' an imprisonable offense

Ethan is often right about a lot of things, but he is not right about this. I can't think of any serious community of people trying to make speech itself illegal -- only groups of people who want to be sure that

(a) when bigotry is aggressively directed at a particular person, it's firmly considered a form of abuse/harrassment and not tolerated, plus sometimes

(b) organized hate crimes are differentiated from random casual crimes, because they have an extra element of threat or "terrorism" to them (e.g., spray-painting Q-bert on a synagogue is just unsightly vandalism, but spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue creates an atmosphere of worry / threat / harrassment that's slightly more serious).

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 18:59 (seventeen years ago) link

criminalising holocaust denial had its roots in specific historical circumstances though, ie post-ww2 in certain countries the risk of neo-nazi groups using it as a strategy of rebuilding support (and in the process assuaging national guilt) was too great. i may have imagined this but wasn't there a debate in austria recently over whether it should be decriminalised? along the lines of "as a nation we have clearly moved past this, everyone knows holocaust deniers are loonies, we should not need such an arcane law any more"

xps

lex pretend, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:04 (seventeen years ago) link

"do you think people should be allowed to deny the holocaust in Germany, Austria and other countries where that's illegal?"

oh for the love of god- i'm irish, non practicing catholic. i have absolutely nothing against the hebrew people as a whole.

i am not a nazi, neo-nazi, sugar-free nazi or sunday nazi.

but are you really asking me if an historian (however controversial) should have been jailed for holding conferences (even ones in biker bars) and writing his beliefs that the holocaust was exaggerated?

that is a crazy, and dangerous law. people should be allowed to deny the holocaust if they like. would you like GWB to introduce a law making it illegal to deny God?

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:04 (seventeen years ago) link

the terms "fag" and "faggot" are manifest of ego gone awry. they are symbolic of the American propensity for competition, and like some of the intense reactions to this thread, they are shorthanded attempts at superiority. that "fag" and "faggot" are still abused today, and that standing up against homophobia can spur such ridicule as demonstrated here, points to the Western sacrifice of sensitivity to an individuality troubled with small-mindedness, ignorance and spite.

Surmounter, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:06 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost

spray-painting a swastika on a synagogue creates an atmosphere of worry / threat / harrassment that's slightly more serious

i see and kind of agree with your point, but i would still be uneasy of making grafitti more or less of a crime because of the who the targets are. i'd find it extremely difficult to draw the line.

every crime has to have a victim, i just think that an action should be judged consistently, not on the identity or sensitivities of the victim/target. and I know that's not a perfect point, before i get nailed.

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:08 (seventeen years ago) link

darraghmac you've being needlessly defensive here (altho understandable on a thread where hoos is accused of boastfulness/smugness/whatever)! you don't have to qualify your views with 'i don't condone this btw' and 'oh for the love of god'.

blueski, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:09 (seventeen years ago) link

the trouble is, darraghmac, not everyone is as 'enlightened' as you. to you, people who deny the holocaust or use hate speech are loonies, no one takes them seriously surely? but these laws are all predicated on the fact that if unchecked, historical lies and derogatory words aimed at dehumanising minorities will proliferate

xps

lex pretend, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:09 (seventeen years ago) link

every crime has to have a victim, i just think that an action should be judged consistently, not on the identity or sensitivities of the victim/target

it's not about the sensitivities of the target (or only partly), it's about the wider social consequences of hate speech/historical lies

lex pretend, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Hey, wow, I get to say "LEX OTM!" Hi-five! Cause once again, like basically NOBODY EVER in the U.S. has seriously advocated criminalizing Holocaust denial, and yes, nations that have those laws tend to have them as remnants of de-Nazification programs and political reconstruction and whatnot.

Seriously, freaking out about the alleged potential for abstract political speech to be criminalized in the US is every bit as frantically ridiculous as thinking there's a "war on Christmas" or that all black people are plotting to rape and kill you.

xpost

i would still be uneasy of making grafitti more or less of a crime because of the who the targets are

It's not the TARGET that makes the difference in that example, it's the CONTENT. And you already live in a nation where the content makes the difference: if I spray-painted "I am going to kill you" on your front door, that would be a rather more serious offense than spray-painting my name.

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost

standing up against homophobia can spur such ridicule as demonstrated here

i'm really not trying to take a stand here on abuse of homosexuals, but i think any ridicule was aimed at the self-congratulory and (possible) complete dramatisation of the event as breathlessly relayed here.

i am fully aware that this may make the guilty parties look a bit arseholish, myself included, but can we not be so po-faced all the time?

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm sitting on the fence but i am at least facing darraghmac's direction.

blueski, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:12 (seventeen years ago) link

what...opposite him?

lex pretend, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:14 (seventeen years ago) link

numerous xposts

hey, i did say that i wasn't making perfect points- and regarding being over-defensive, i think you'll agree that even on ILX it's hard to even play devils advocate on racism/homophobia kind of issues without getting completely and unneccessarily ripped to shreds.

i think nabisco's point about content is otm, but that content isn't made any different by the fact that i may be homosexual/jewish/a woman/a clown or whatever.

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:14 (seventeen years ago) link

what things is it okay to be self-congrtulatory about on ILE now?

being drunk
maybe finding some sort of unbelievable bargain in the sales

anything else?

blueski, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:14 (seventeen years ago) link

liking shit 80's music i think

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Spelling "self-congratulatory" right? (Kidding, kidding.)

Lostandfound, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:17 (seventeen years ago) link

P.S. Darraghmac has just fallen into the great lie/fear that's at the center of people fearing this stuff -- this bizarre leap to assume that things are being dealt with based on the identity of the victim, as if someone's being offered "special protection," or it's suddenly "more of a crime" to harm a minority than it is to harm a white person. And this very, very obviously isn't the logic: it's that some crimes carry an element of terrorism and threat. If you beat up every Latino who comes into your neighborhood, you're not just committing assault -- you're engaging in systematic intimidation against all Latinos. (Cf a black man in -- I think -- being prosecuted recently under hate crimes provisions for throwing something through a woman's windshield while complaining that too many white people were coming to the local mall.)

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:17 (seventeen years ago) link

"enlightened"

yeah, it's pretty outlandish to argue for hate of any kind, even if it's a word - not as small as it may seem.

xxxpost self-congratulatory = pride, and there's nothing wrong with being proud of being open-minded. it's not as common a characteristic as it may seem. and whether it be pride or homosexuality, the crux of the issue involves ridicule, a small but biting form of hate, both unnecessary and unjustified.

Surmounter, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:17 (seventeen years ago) link

You can't have a thread about free speech without the fire thing, you know.

i just think that an action should be judged consistently, not on the identity or sensitivities of the victim/target.

It's not so much about the target as it is the context, which sometimes includes the target. <trope>You can't yell fire in a crowded theatre, after all</trope>.

stet, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Sub-questions for D: Do you think that death threats should be criminal, or warrant criminal investigation? Do you favor throwing out intent in considering levels of murder/manslaughter? Do you think systematic intimidation and harrassment should be legalized?

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:19 (seventeen years ago) link

If someone goes around burning crosses on black people's lawns, do you think the extent of his crimes is trespassing, having a bonfire without a permit, and reckless endangerment?

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:21 (seventeen years ago) link

(If he digs a moat and sandbags around each cross, should we knock off reckless endangerment?)

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:21 (seventeen years ago) link

see, now, surmounter- that was exactly what i was talking about. well done. end of this thread for me.

anyway, stet and nabisco were winning anyways.

see you on another thread, i'm really not going to get into personals, i find established ILXors always seem to come out on top for some reason.

darraghmac, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Threats are a weird area. I don't think I've ever taken them seriously, although I know a lot of people do. It's just that, in my experience, people who make threats to harm or even kill other people very rarely actually carry them out. But some do, of course, so... And if threats carry a racial or sexual aspect, they seem more insidious. Criminal, though?

(I'm on the fence wrt hate laws. We have them here in Canada, but I'm unsure what I think about them.)

Lostandfound, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Dude, nobody's getting personal, and you strike me as a pretty established ILXor yourself! I'm just trying to see if you acknowledge that there's a line where speech becomes harrassment, intimidation, or threat. We accept that they do when we say stuff like "I'm going to murder you"; are there no criminal acts you see working the same way?

L+F: w/r/t hate crimes, consider that if someone's actually assaulted someone for reasons of bigotry, he's kinda already proved himself willing to follow through. I dunno, I can understand arguing that these laws aren't necessary, but I don't quite see how people assault the logic or philosophy behind them. If we were looking at an actual successful 60s-style campaign to, say, intimidate some group of people and keep them out of a neighborhood, I think we'd all see how an individual assault wasn't just an assault -- how it was part of a conspiracy toward racial injustice and a mild, localized form of terrorism, you know?

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:28 (seventeen years ago) link

I need to think this stuff through more.

nasbisco, I worked with street kids for a long time and I've heard every threat under the sun and just learned not to take them seriously, so even "I'm going to murder you" means little to me. But if you tack on "you little fag" or "you fucking n****r" to the end it does get a lot darker (okay, that's a big "duh" isn't it), but if the person making the threat calls out to bystanders, say, looking for support or solidarity it gets worse still. I suppose I'm wondering where the real world line gets drawn.

Or, my first sentence in this post!

Lostandfound, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:35 (seventeen years ago) link

There is no hard and fast line, that's why it's left up to judges/prosecutors/juries in indidiual cases to decide whether or not it's been crossed.

Eppy, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:39 (seventeen years ago) link

And I haven't really answered you, have I?

Instead of laws, however, couldn't bigotry (during the commision of another crime) be an aggravating factor for individual courts to decide on a case-by-case basis, though? Hate crime is too close to thought crime, maybe. But I can't really argue with you scenario of someone already with a history of assault against a minority. Just trying to get this straight in my head.

Ha, xpost with Eppy.

Lostandfound, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:40 (seventeen years ago) link

(With a reminder that it's not that way in Canada, though. We have hate laws here.)

Lostandfound, Monday, 28 May 2007 19:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Instead of laws, however, couldn't bigotry (during the commision of another crime) be an aggravating factor for individual courts to decide on a case-by-case basis, though?

That's what "hate crime" MEANS in the U.S.!

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:15 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, geez, I'm just going to paraphrase a bunch of crap from Wikipedia so we at least all know what we're talking about here, at least in US FEDERAL terms:

-- a 1969 law that makes it a federal case if anyone "by force of threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with ... any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin," specifically with regard to federally protected activities including voting and going to school -- the Civil Rights context of that one should be absolutely obvious

-- a 1994 SENTENCING act that increases penalties for crimes committed on the basis of race, religion, etc.

-- various state laws, both criminal and civil

All approved by the Supreme Court in 1993 on mostly the same basis I'm outlining above -- Rehnquist's opinion sez: "This conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm.... bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest."

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:23 (seventeen years ago) link

so what we really need is federal precedent classifying the word 'faggot' and 'retard' as hatespeech?

remy bean, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:27 (seventeen years ago) link

(P.S.: The fact that lots and lots of Americans ALREADY imagine these laws are one step away from throwing people in prison for being racist or insulting one another is one very good reason we will never actually have laws that involve throwing people in prison for being racist or insulting one another.)

nabisco, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:28 (seventeen years ago) link

but are you really asking me if an historian (however controversial) should have been jailed for holding conferences (even ones in biker bars) and writing his beliefs that the holocaust was exaggerated?

that is a crazy, and dangerous law. people should be allowed to deny the holocaust if they like. would you like GWB to introduce a law making it illegal to deny God?

-- darraghmac, Monday, May 28, 2007 7:04 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

yes i fucking am because he was a fucking nazi who addressed nazi rallies. he did not say the holocaust had been 'exaggerated', he denied it ever happened.

That one guy that quit, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:35 (seventeen years ago) link

speaking as somebody who falls into no less than 3 constitutionally protected minority groups (4, if you consider a college stint as endangered waterfowl) it's difficult to reconcile the forbiddenness of "intimidating or interfering with...' [because of race, religion, class] with the experience of having been intimidated and interfered with because of non-race, non-religious, non-class issues for many, many, years.

as i see it, in any incident where the motive or aggravating factor in a crime is raw bigotry – acted prejudice with malevolent intent - it should not matter what the particular bias is for/against. it shouldn't matter if one agrees or disagrees with the premise: torching a pedophile ex-con holocaust denier's car is (and should be) as criminal as torching a charitable convent's nun-wagon-comissary truck.

our moral and ethical sympathies notwithstanding, any behavior that seeks to harm based on intolerant judgement of a group or bloc's politics, beliefs, or lifestyle is dead wrong. case-by-case action against individual members, if necessary, is exponentially more preferable, just, and in line with the underlying principles of the constitution & bill of rights.

remy bean, Monday, 28 May 2007 20:49 (seventeen years ago) link

AT WORK, I like to say, "That's not [name of business] language." And then if they continue it, "That's not [name of business] language. Leave now."

Abbott, Monday, 28 May 2007 21:59 (seventeen years ago) link

It sounds so kindergarten techer but somehow most people take it seriously.

Abbott, Monday, 28 May 2007 22:00 (seventeen years ago) link


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