(By the way, one of the reasons I enjoy discoursing with people in this
forum is because they challenge me to really be smart about my ideas)

 

OK, after Darren's argument that both bad and good people have been
censored in the past, can we at least agree that Censorship makes sense
when someone is advocating infringing on the rights, freedoms, liberties
and property of others, but that those rights do NOT include a "right to
not be offended?"

 

...Ben Chambers

www.pacificwebguy.com

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On 23-Dec-08 20:19, Chambers wrote:
> (By the way, one of the reasons I enjoy discoursing with people in this
> forum is because they challenge me to really be smart about my ideas)
> 
>  
> 
> OK, after Darren's argument that both bad and good people have been
> censored in the past, can we at least agree that Censorship makes sense
> when someone is advocating infringing on the rights, freedoms, liberties
> and property of others, but that those rights do NOT include a "right to
> not be offended?"
> 
no

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"Chambers" <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote in message

> OK, after Darren's argument that both bad and good people have been
> censored in the past, can we at least agree that Censorship makes sense
> when someone is advocating infringing on the rights, freedoms, liberties
> and property of others,

It makes sense to censor speaking against slavery?

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> OK, after Darren's argument that both bad and good people have been
> censored in the past, can we at least agree that Censorship makes sense
> when someone is advocating infringing on the rights, freedoms, liberties
> and property of others, but that those rights do NOT include a "right to
> not be offended?"

  Democratic constitutional freedom of speech entitles anyone to express
their disagreement about the democratic constitutional process if they so
want. Censoring someone for expressing their opinion like that would
undermine the very principle of freedom of speech.

  As Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will
defend to the death your right to say it."

  Actively *doing* something (or making others do something) to harm others
or limit their rights is criminal, but not because of anything related to
freedom of speech.

  Criminalizing verbal offences is, in my opinion, a very shaky ground.
It's very easy to create laws related to this subject which are very vague
and can be used to limit freedom of speech in ways which were not intended
originally. It's also very easy to impose the law differently for different
people (which blatantly breaks the principle of equality).

  Sadly, this is becoming more and more common practice in the modern free
world. "Minorities" (which sometimes even aren't) are being overly protected,
even to the point where it becomes blatant discrimination against the
"majority", by a government which has swore to uphold democratic
constitutional rights for everybody.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Chambers wrote:
> OK, after Darren's argument that both bad and good people have been
> censored in the past,

That wasn't what I said. I said there *are* obvious examples of where the 
world might have been a better place had certain people been censored. Not 
that they had been. (Altho I expect many people have been censored that 
would have both improved and disimproved the world too, it's difficult to 
point to one.)

 > can we at least agree that Censorship makes sense
> when someone is advocating infringing on the rights, freedoms, liberties
> and property of others, 

No. "Rights" and "freedom" and "properties" are nebulous terms when you're 
talking about individuals interacting, just like the word "fair" doesn't 
really make sense.

Your right to "control your body" infringes on the "baby's right to life." 
Your right to ride on the bus infringes on my right not to have to sit next 
to you. Your right to polygamy infringes on my right to the sanctity of 
marriage. Your right to freedom infringes on my right to hold slaves.

In the USA, truth is an absolute defense against an accusation of slander. 
If what I say about you is true, you can't complain that my saying it is 
injuring you. In addition, an individual can rarely slander someone more 
powerful than that individual. In other words, the New York Times can 
slander Darren, but it's almost impossible for Darren to slander the New 
York Times. The assumption is that the defense against me saying bad things 
about you is you denying them, and only when your ability to say bad things 
about me greatly outweighs my ability to deny them do these sorts of laws 
come into effect. (In theory.)

The problem with the "right not to be offended" is that it's never expressed 
as "offended". It's heresy (which is about god, not you), or "for the good 
of the children", or "dangerous to the public", or something like that. Prop 
8 wasn't passed because gay people were offensive. It was passed because 
"the sanctity of marriage is attacked".

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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Darren New wrote:
> Your right to polygamy infringes on my right to the sanctity of marriage.

Yeah, that is always a good one. So say all the people that fail to read 
*any* history on the subject and thus fail to grasp that in the 1800s, 
and up until it was banned:

1. Most marriages, even in the US, where polygamous.
2. Most marriages where arranged.
3. The ones that where not #1, where still usually #2, so it was common 
for ones true love to be a "mistress", not the person you where actually 
married to.

Makes one wonder what the "lets return to the nations true traditions" 
people really do want... I mean, if they meant it, instead of just 
making shit up they *think* where the nations original traditions, then 
trying to impose them. lol

But, fact is, the "right to not be offended" is nonsensical anyway, 
which is why its not codified into law. How do you determine *who* the 
victim is when just about any idiot idea imaginable is believed by 
someone some place, and **someone** among the other 300,000,000 people 
in the country finds "that" offensive when expressed, done, shown, or 
suggested? The only "right not to be offended" anyone has is the age old 
"community standards" laws, and almost all of those are based on some 
mixture of misunderstanding, paranoia, fear, stupidity, and a failure to 
grasp the "real" causes of the problems they are intended to address.

The result, to give an example of what "might" trigger it, is, 
inevitably, some law that punishes 500 people who, say, want to nude sun 
bathe, on the basis of the 5 idiots that got drunk and peed on someone's 
car during spring break. The problem isn't the nudity, its the behavior, 
and the *refusal* of either the other beach goers, of the cops, to 
enforce "good" behavior. Instead they equate the solution to the problem 
with removing what the "community" decides is a problem, rather than 
dealing with the real issues, and, most of the time, this ends up being 
based on some religious interpretation of what the problem is (sorry, 
but its true), even when there are those the belong to the same 
religion, who, by being a minority of them, get ignored, while having 
the opposite view. (In this specific case, I find it damn idiotic that 
there are Christian nudist groups in the same country as the vast 
majority of idiots that think "dressing properly" will prevent lewd 
behavior, drunkeness, and/or rapes, despite all evidence to the contrary.)

So, sure, if your "community standard" says something about it, then... 
it more or less equates to "you have a right not to be offended by 
this", otherwise, you are SOL, as it should be. But, like someone 
pointed out recently on a blog which often talks about the politics of 
some of the more atrocious trolls in the US, small towns are the ones 
most likely to "have" such standards, and the reason is invariably that 
they are controlled by a small number of people, isolated from different 
opinions, and the more isolated they are, the more insane their 
interpretations of what is right and wrong get. And, this is the most 
disturbing thing, its precisely these kinds of insular, narrow minded, 
self absorbed, ignorant of the rest of the world, people that the 
Republicans kept whining about being the "core" of real American values 
during the presidential campaign... Yeah, I *really* want the 
dysfunctional, self protecting, denial driven, and morally relativistic 
cast of the Morel Orel cartoon running the US government... lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Makes one wonder what the "lets return to the nations true traditions" 
> people really do want...

Segregation, and likely slavery. Heck, in my lifetime it was illegal for a 
black person to marry a white person, so that would certianly seem to be 
"traditional" behavior here.

I'm in some ways happy that Prop 8 passed, as it eliminates from rational 
discussion the argument that "religion isn't abusive, and Islam isn't to 
blame for suicide bombers, and it's only a nutty minority of Christians who 
kill doctors, and you can't paint religion as if everyone religious wants to 
take away your rights and have you conform to their religion." Because, you 
know, obviously a majority of the religious people in *this* state certainly 
do, so I'd think it becomes incumbent on anyone arguing the above to provide 
evidence that Prop8 is somehow a special case.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
   see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.

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On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:56:12 -0800, Darren New wrote:

>  It was
> passed because "the sanctity of marriage is attacked".

Which I personally think is absolutely ridiculous.

Whether two men (or two women) can get married doesn't affect my 
relationship with my wife.  Pretending that it does would be my choice.

That said, I don't think it's reasonable to require, for example, clergy, 
to marry people when that union goes against the religious beliefs.

But that gets really dicey too, but that does fall within the bounds of 
the religious institution.  From a secular standpoint, if two people want 
to get married, let them.

Let's do this:  Everyone's "marriage" in the eyes of the law is a "civil 
union".  Those who want to be "married" can do so in the religious 
institution of their choice.  And the rights that couple gets to things 
like property, hospital visitation, next of kin status, etc - ie, 
anything rooted in *law* - that's granted by the civil union.  Anything 
granted in the "religious" realm (for example, the right to claim a unity 
that lasts for all eternity into the afterlife, Mormon "family sealings" 
adn the like) all fall in the realm of the religious institution that 
performs the ceremony.

Problem solved.

Jim

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On 05-Jan-09 23:48, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:56:12 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> 
>>  It was
>> passed because "the sanctity of marriage is attacked".
> 
> Which I personally think is absolutely ridiculous.
> 
> Whether two men (or two women) can get married doesn't affect my 
> relationship with my wife.  Pretending that it does would be my choice.

you know my position in this: this law is void as there does not exist a 
full proof definition of what a man or a woman is. Perhaps one of those 
more difficult cases could challenge the law.

> That said, I don't think it's reasonable to require, for example, clergy, 
> to marry people when that union goes against the religious beliefs.

The main discussion in the Netherlands was if a civil servant has the 
same right to refuse.

> But that gets really dicey too, but that does fall within the bounds of 
> the religious institution.  From a secular standpoint, if two people want 
> to get married, let them.
> 
> Let's do this:  Everyone's "marriage" in the eyes of the law is a "civil 
> union".  Those who want to be "married" can do so in the religious 
> institution of their choice.  And the rights that couple gets to things 
> like property, hospital visitation, next of kin status, etc - ie, 
> anything rooted in *law* - that's granted by the civil union.  Anything 
> granted in the "religious" realm (for example, the right to claim a unity 
> that lasts for all eternity into the afterlife, Mormon "family sealings" 
> adn the like) all fall in the realm of the religious institution that 
> performs the ceremony.
> 
> Problem solved.

Would your civil marriage also have to be acknowledged by other states 
and countries?

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On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:02:07 +0100, andrel wrote:

>> That said, I don't think it's reasonable to require, for example,
>> clergy, to marry people when that union goes against the religious
>> beliefs.
> 
> The main discussion in the Netherlands was if a civil servant has the
> same right to refuse.

I think that a civil servant would not/should not have the right to 
refuse.  If they take the job, they know what they may be asked to do.  
You can't take a job and then object to doing the job.

It's like people here in the US who decide to become pharmacists and then 
refuse to dispense medications because of their religious beliefs.  Too 
bad, they knew they might have to do that when they signed up to do the 
job.  If it's a legal prescription in the jurisdiction, they do not have 
the right to refuse service for any reason other than nonpayment.

>> But that gets really dicey too, but that does fall within the bounds of
>> the religious institution.  From a secular standpoint, if two people
>> want to get married, let them.
>> 
>> Let's do this:  Everyone's "marriage" in the eyes of the law is a
>> "civil union".  Those who want to be "married" can do so in the
>> religious institution of their choice.  And the rights that couple gets
>> to things like property, hospital visitation, next of kin status, etc -
>> ie, anything rooted in *law* - that's granted by the civil union. 
>> Anything granted in the "religious" realm (for example, the right to
>> claim a unity that lasts for all eternity into the afterlife, Mormon
>> "family sealings" adn the like) all fall in the realm of the religious
>> institution that performs the ceremony.
>> 
>> Problem solved.
> 
> Would your civil marriage also have to be acknowledged by other states
> and countries?

If I wanted rights in those other states and/or countries, yes.  My 
marriage is in fact a civil marriage (we did not have a religious 
ceremony), so it already is.

In the eyes of the Mormon church, my marriage isn't valid, because we're 
not Mormon, but I don't really care about my status in the Mormon 
church.  Similarly, I don't really care about my marriage's status in 
Outer Mongolia, but if I did care, then I'd do some research to find out 
what I had to do to make sure we got the rights and privileges that were 
important to us should we move there.

Jim

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