The case for hate speech

[Axulus]

In a roundabout but important way, bigoted ideas and hateful speech play an essential part in advancing minority rights. Even if we have every right to boycott Ender’s Game, gays are better served by answering people like Card than by trying to squelch or punish them.

Lately, people have been asking me why so much has happened in America, seemingly so suddenly, to advance gay equality generally and gay marriage specifically. It’s a good question, with some obvious answers. Demographics are one: younger people who are more relaxed about homosexuality are replacing older people who harbor long-standing prejudices. Also, as more gay people come out of the closet and live and love openly, we are no longer an alien presence, a sinister underground, a threat to children; we are the family down the block.

...

Something else, I believe, was decisive: we won in the realm of ideas. And our antagonists—people who spouted speech we believed was deeply offensive, from Anita Bryant to Jerry Falwell to, yes, Orson Scott Card—helped us win.

In 2004, when I was making the talk-show rounds for my new book on gay marriage, I found myself on a Seattle radio station, debating a prominent gay-marriage opponent. After she made her case and I made mine, a caller rang in to complain to the host. “Your guest,” he said, meaning me, “is the most dangerous man in America.” Why? “Because,” said the caller, “he sounds so reasonable.”

...

A generation ago, the main obstacle to gay equality was not hatred, though of course there was a good deal of that. Most people who supported the repressive status quo meant well. The bigger problem, rather, was that people had wrong ideas about homosexuality: factual misapprehensions and moral misjudgments born of ignorance, superstition, taboo, disgust. If people think you are a threat to their children or their family, they are going to fear and hate you. Gays’ most urgent need was epistemological, not political. We had to replace bad ideas with good ones.

Our great blessing was to live in a society that understands where knowledge comes from: not from political authority or personal revelation, but from a public process of open-ended debate and discussion, in which every day millions of people venture and test billions of hypotheses. All but a few of those theories are found wanting, but some survive and flourish over time, and those comprise our knowledge.

The restless process of trial and error does not allow human knowledge to be complete or perfect, but it does allow for steady improvement. If a society is open to robust critical debate, you can look at a tape of its moral and intellectual development over time and know which way it is running: usually toward less social violence, more social participation, and a wider circle of dignity and toleration. And if you see a society that is stuck and not making that kind of progress, you can guess that its intellectual system is not very liberal.

The critical factor in the elimination of error is not individuals’ commitment to the truth as they see it (if anything, most people are too confident they’re right); it is society’s commitment to the protection of criticism, however misguided, upsetting, or ungodly. America’s transformation on gay rights over the past few years is a triumph of the open society. Not long ago, gays were pariahs. We had no real political power, only the force of our arguments. But in a society where free exchange is the rule, that was enough. We had the coercive power of truth.

History shows that the more open the intellectual environment, the better minorities will do. We learn empirically that women are as intelligent and capable as men; this knowledge strengthens the moral claims of gender equality. We learn from social experience that laws permitting religious pluralism make societies more governable; this knowledge strengthens the moral claims of religious liberty. We learn from critical argument that the notion that some races are fit to be enslaved by others is impossible to defend without recourse to hypocrisy and mendacity; this knowledge strengthens the moral claims of inherent human dignity. To make social learning possible, we need to criticize our adversaries, of course. But no less do we need them to criticize us.

All of which brings me back to Orson Scott Card. Some of the things he has said are execrable. He wrote in 2004 that when gay marriage is allowed, “society will bend all its efforts to seize upon any hint of homosexuality in our young people and encourage it.” That was not quite a flat reiteration of the ancient lie that homosexuals seduce and recruit children—the homophobic equivalent of the anti-Semitic blood libel—but it is about as close as anyone dares to come today.

Fortunately, Card’s claim is false. Better still, it is preposterous. Most fair-minded people who read his screeds will see that they are not proper arguments at all, but merely ill-tempered reflexes. When Card puts his stuff out there, he makes us look good by comparison. The more he talks, and the more we talk, the better we sound.

I can think of quite a few reasons why boycotting Ender’s Game is a bad idea. It looks like intimidation, which plays into the right’s “gay bullies” narrative, in which intolerant homosexuals are purportedly driving conservatives from the public square. It would have little or no effect on Card while punishing the many other people who worked on the movie, most of whom, Hollywood being Hollywood, probably are not anti-gay (and many of whom almost certainly are gay). It would undercut the real raison d’être of the gay-rights movement: not to win equality just for gay Americans but to advance the freedom of all Americans to live as who they really are and say what they really think. Even if they are Orson Scott Card.

Above all, the boycott should fizzle, and I expect it will fizzle, because gay people know we owe our progress to freedom of speech and freedom of thought. The best society for minorities is not the society that protects minorities from speech but the one that protects speech from minorities (and from majorities, too). Gay Americans can do the cause of equality more good by rejecting this boycott than by supporting it. I’ll see the movie—if the reviews are good.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-case-for-hate-speech/309524/2/

 

[Axulus]

The last few years have seen the emergence of a smarter, subtler argument for hate-speech restrictions, one based not on subjective individual harm but on objective social harm. The idea is that when hate speech reaches a certain level of pervasiveness in a society, minorities no longer enjoy equal citizenship — so the speech must be restricted to make sure everyone’s participatory rights are protected. That’s the case which, for example, Jeremy Waldron makes, and it’s the one you mostly hear nowadays, for example in the context of college speech codes that purport to forestall a climate of discrimination on campus.

In a new afterword to my book, I give this newer theory a hard look and find it’s an improvement, but nonetheless has many of the same old problems. How do you enforce a hate-speech policy apolitically? How do you prevent it from being coopted by bigoted majorities or opportunistic politicians? How do you prevent overdeterrence and the chilling of important but controversial conversations? Who determines trigger thresholds for actionable speech, and on what basis? What’s the cost of stereotyping minorities as vulnerable and defenseless? What’s the cost of denying the agency of the listener, who, to some considerable extent, can choose how to react to offensive or hateful speech? And why stop with speech deemed harmful to minority participation, when there is so much other socially harmful speech out there? Doesn’t it harm society to let climate-change deniers yammer on?

Above all, the idea that hate speech always harms minorities is false. To the contrary: painful though hate speech may be for individual members of minorities or other targeted groups, its toleration is to their great collective benefit, because in a climate of free intellectual exchange hateful and bigoted ideas are refuted and discredited, not merely suppressed. The genius of the open society is that it harnesses the whole range of public criticism, including offensive and hurtful speech, in a decentralized knowledge-making process that has no rival at the job minorities most care about: finding truth and debunking bigotry. That is how we gay folks achieved the stunning gains we’ve made in America: by arguing toward truth.

Rosenbaum says, “Jurors are as capable of working through these uncertainties in the area of emotional harms as they are in the realm of physical injury.” Really? The many college administrators overseeing speech codes, who are probably at least as bright and well intentioned as most jurors, seem to be having a lot of problems distinguishing between unpopular opinions and intolerable expression. Here are a few representative picks from the Foundation for Individual Rights for Education’s listing of recent cases:

a professor was summarily suspended for joking in his class, “Am I on a killing spree, or what?” when a student complained;

a professor was put on leave for an anti-National Rifle Association tweet (on his own time and account);

students were barred from distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution on Constitution Day.

The big problem for proponents of hate-speech laws and codes is that they can never explain where to draw a stable and consistent line between hate speech and vigorous criticism, or who exactly can be trusted to draw it. The reason is that there is no such line. Pace Rosenbaum, sharp public criticism of the kind that we rely on to advance social learning is very often hurtful, and surprisingly often intended to be hurtful. As the historian and philosopher of science David Hull observes, “Scientists acknowledge that among their motivations are natural curiosity, the love of truth, and the desire to help humanity, but other inducements exist as well, and one of them is to ‘get that son of a bitch.’”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...04/a-new-argument-for-hate-speech-laws-um-no/

 

[NobleSavage]

I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it.

--Voltaire

 

[Axulus]

I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it.

--Voltaire

And more importantly, I reserve the right to eviscerate your bad ideas.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I disagree with what you say, but I'll spend my hard earned dollars to pay for your royalties!

 

[repoman]

Interesting, but I would make the case that bigotry on different (mostly internet) platforms have different effects on the viewers of them.

If you are on 4chan (now also 8chan) or bestgore.com or newnation.org you get a constant mantra of being given the truth that minorities (read that as niggers) are genetically inferior and bring on all of their own problems and there is no real challenge to this. So you can have a whole group becoming very firm in their views. Granted the amount of people going to those sites is very small.

As a brief aside about the gay recruiting thing (which I don't believe to be real to any wide degree) - this has two aspects that the proponents argue. First is that they say that even talking about the existence of gay people to children (under 10) is recruitment. No, it is not. Second, they talk about recruitment in later high school and college - but that is just a gay person putting out feelers for a date or hookup like every straight person ever has done.

As an atheist, I could say that the one form of recruitment that COULD be said to be happening from a Christian point of view is that into hedonism and forsaking marriage. I think that it is within the realm of possibility to have that be the focus and xtians looking down more on promiscuous straights than long term monogamous gays.

 

[laughing dog]

The big problem for anti-hate speech proponents is where to draw a stable line between criticism and hate speech that incites violence.

 

[fta]

I may not agree with what you say, but to your death I will defend your right to say it.

--Voltaire

I hate to be picky, but that was actually S.G. Tallentyre paraphrasing Voltaire.

 

[DBT]

We all value freedom of speech, say our political leaders, our parliamentarians...but you can't say something that upsets this group, or that religion. That is not politically correct. This is offensive. You can't say that in public. We can't have so and so vilifying our minorities. We ban hate speech because it incites violence. You'll be arrested....but of course we value freedom of speech.

 

[Togo]

I can see the argument that is better for a minority group to suffer in silence than to try and combat hate speech directed at individuals. What I'm not seeing is where it is better for the individual to suffer, in return for a dubious benefit to his or her 'group'. The basic reason why hate speech is banned is not because that is the best way to convince people that their stance is wrong, but rather because its the best way for a victim of such speech being attacked, verbally, socially, economically, or physically, to liberate themselves from their attackers. What arguments would you give to someone who is in danger from being ostracised, assaulted, or even physically attacked, in order to convince them that influential people who call for them to brutally murdered should be allowed to continue?

 

[Keith&Co.]

What arguments would you give to someone who is in danger from being ostracised, assaulted, or even physically attacked, in order to convince them that influential people who call for them to brutally murdered should be allowed to continue?

Donald Sterling.

Admittedly, Sterling was simply racist, not genocidal, but once his comments became public, his peers were forced to react, and to distance themselves from him exactly because of what he said.

Those that speak out so openly about killing all blacks, all gays, all fill-in-the-blank, tend not to be in power. People in power, or those who want to be in power, tend (not all) tend to distance themselves from people that are drawing that sort of attention.

if the leader of a megachurch started to parrot Pastor Steven (http://talkfreethought.org/showthre...stmas’-if-all-gays-are-killed-as-God-commands), what would be the likely effect on his congregation?

 

[Togo]

What arguments would you give to someone who is in danger from being ostracised, assaulted, or even physically attacked, in order to convince them that influential people who call for them to brutally murdered should be allowed to continue?

Donald Sterling.

Admittedly, Sterling was simply racist, not genocidal, but once his comments became public, his peers were forced to react, and to distance themselves from him exactly because of what he said.

Those that speak out so openly about killing all blacks, all gays, all fill-in-the-blank, tend not to be in power. People in power, or those who want to be in power, tend (not all) tend to distance themselves from people that are drawing that sort of attention.

if the leader of a megachurch started to parrot Pastor Steven (http://talkfreethought.org/showthre...stmas’-if-all-gays-are-killed-as-God-commands), what would be the likely effect on his congregation?

It would shrink to a small percentage of it's original size, and that remainder would get more militant and activist in persecuting gays. Overall his power and wealth would go down, but the number of gays attacked locally would go up and his power and influence over the rump of his former congregation would probably go up. If you're gay, and live next door, that's not a good outcome.

 

[Keith&Co.]

It would shrink to a small percentage of it's original size, and that remainder would get more militant and activist in persecuting gays. Overall his power and wealth would go down, but the number of gays attacked locally would go up and his power and influence over the rump of his former congregation would probably go up. If you're gay, and live next door, that's not a good outcome.

Then what's the other choice?
To stamp out speech society disapproves of? How far would the civil rights movement have gone if that was policy? Gay rights?

How do we stamp out intolerable speech without putting a weapon in the hands of those that would shut us up?

It' snot perfect, but it beats the alternative.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The big problem for anti-hate speech proponents is where to draw a stable line between criticism and hate speech that incites violence.

Exactly. When there is a substantial pattern of actual violence behind the goals of the hate speech then I think the state has a legitimate interest in preventing it. I don't think Islamist recruiters should be allowed to hide behind the 1st.

Furthermore, in the case of sporadic violence I would hold speakers responsible if the violence can be linked to them, but not in general. (Mr. A goes around preaching hatred of gays. B is a big fan of A and beats up a gay after listening to a lot of what he says. A should be held accountable.)

 

[ronburgundy]

The big problem for anti-hate speech proponents is where to draw a stable line between criticism and hate speech that incites violence.

To clarify, by "anti-hate speech proponents" are your referring to people who oppose legal bans on hate speech? IF so, then the lack of objective line btw criticism and implicitly inciting violence is less a problem for them than it is for those who support such bans. Supporters of speech bans inherently support mere criticism of others and the stating of personal preferences since such things cannot be reliably separated under the law from the kind of speech they want banned which often merely is inferred to incite violence without explicitly calling for it.

I can see the argument that is better for a minority group to suffer in silence than to try and combat hate speech directed at individuals. What I'm not seeing is where it is better for the individual to suffer, in return for a dubious benefit to his or her 'group'.

The point of the OP quote is exactly the opposite of suffering in silence. The point is that only when hateful ideas are allowed to be voiced can they be directly attacked. The point is that such ideas should be attacked by allowing them to be voiced and then attacked, rather than by the strategy of banning their voicing and forcing them underground to still do most of their damage. The point is that the "dubious benefit" to the attacked group is the presumed benefit of banning the speech, when it is the ideas and the ultimate actions that generate them which are the real danger. Speech bans only attack words, while open criticism of bad ideas that are allowed to be expressed attack the bad ideas themselves.

In addition, hateful notions are neither neccessary nor sufficient to incite violence. Calls to violence can be made dispassionately without hateful emotion, and hateful emotion is far from calling for violence as the solution to the thing hated. Thus, banning direct and explicit calls for violence would be one thing and far more justifiable, because it would make any "hateful" sentiments or criticisms of the targeted group completely irrelevant to the legality of the speech.

 

[laughing dog]

To clarify, by "anti-hate speech proponents" are your referring to people who oppose legal bans on hate speech? IF so, then the lack of objective line btw criticism and implicitly inciting violence is less a problem for them than it is for those who support such bans. Supporters of speech bans inherently support mere criticism of others and the stating of personal preferences since such things cannot be reliably separated under the law from the kind of speech they want banned which often merely is inferred to incite violence without explicitly calling for it.

I don't think so. What constitutes "violence" and "incitement" is just as susceptible to a lack of an objective line.

 

[ronburgundy]

To clarify, by "anti-hate speech proponents" are your referring to people who oppose legal bans on hate speech? IF so, then the lack of objective line btw criticism and implicitly inciting violence is less a problem for them than it is for those who support such bans. Supporters of speech bans inherently support mere criticism of others and the stating of personal preferences since such things cannot be reliably separated under the law from the kind of speech they want banned which often merely is inferred to incite violence without explicitly calling for it.

I don't think so. What constitutes "violence" and "incitement" is just as susceptible to a lack of an objective line.

How does that support your case? Lack of objectivity in what speech is doing can only be an argument against any laws restricting speech based upon what subjective category it belongs to (which is what hate-speech laws are).
In contrast, their is a very clear distinction between committing actual violence and inciting it, since the former required physical actions and physical causality while the latter is purely psychological causality presumed under highly suspect psychological theories to impact the actions of other people.

Those who want to draw the line between action and speech are on much firmer and more scientifically objective ground than those that want to draw the line between harsh criticism and speech the might theoretically at some unspecified point in the future motivate other people (when may other preconditions are present) to commit violence.

 

[laughing dog]

I don't think so. What constitutes "violence" and "incitement" is just as susceptible to a lack of an objective line.

How does that support your case? Lack of objectivity in what speech is doing can only be an argument against any laws restricting speech based upon what subjective category it belongs to (which is what hate-speech laws are).
In contrast, their is a very clear distinction between committing actual violence and inciting it, since the former required physical actions and physical causality while the latter is purely psychological causality presumed under highly suspect psychological theories to impact the actions of other people.
Those who want to draw the line between action and speech are on much firmer and more scientifically objective ground than those that want to draw the line between harsh criticism and speech the might theoretically at some unspecified point in the future motivate other people (when may other preconditions are present) to commit violence.

I don't see how you can argue that when you basically rebutted it in your response. My point was and is that there is subjectivity in "line drawing" is endemic to either view.

 

[ronburgundy]

How does that support your case? Lack of objectivity in what speech is doing can only be an argument against any laws restricting speech based upon what subjective category it belongs to (which is what hate-speech laws are).
In contrast, their is a very clear distinction between committing actual violence and inciting it, since the former required physical actions and physical causality while the latter is purely psychological causality presumed under highly suspect psychological theories to impact the actions of other people.
Those who want to draw the line between action and speech are on much firmer and more scientifically objective ground than those that want to draw the line between harsh criticism and speech the might theoretically at some unspecified point in the future motivate other people (when may other preconditions are present) to commit violence.

I don't see how you can argue that when you basically rebutted it in your response. My point was and is that there is subjectivity in "line drawing" is endemic to either view.

Extreme false equivalency. The subjectivity is many many times greater when categorizing differences in the psychological impact of speech (what hate speech laws requires) versus categorizing whether something is speech or a physical act causing physical harm to others. In addition, there are clear objective criteria that distinguish a direct order from speech that may or may not have motivated an unknown stranger to act violently. Those features include evidence of intentionally directing the commands selectively toward the persons that actually committed the physical act of violence. In contrast since most "hate speech" is voiced to a general audience of strangers with no real connection to the speaker and has no observable impact upon 99.9% of those who hear it, it is impossible to distinguish criticism with no intended or actual incitation to violence from speech with such intent or such effects, unless the incitation to violence is very explicit and direct.
The difference is objectivity is as extreme as the difference between whether an object is a chair or a cat can be objectively determined versus whether a comment on the internet was intended to be sincere or humorous can be objectively determined.
It is also similar to the extreme differences in the reliability and validity of the methods of measurement in the physical sciences versus sociology. (note I am a social scientists but I don't have delusions that the methods of measurement available to me have the reliability of measuring the atomic weight of an object).

 

[laughing dog]

I don't see how you can argue that when you basically rebutted it in your response. My point was and is that there is subjectivity in "line drawing" is endemic to either view.

Extreme false equivalency. The subjectivity is many many times greater when categorizing differences in the psychological impact of speech (what hate speech laws requires) versus categorizing whether something is speech or a physical act causing physical harm to others. In addition, there are clear objective criteria that distinguish a direct order from speech that may or may not have motivated an unknown stranger to act violently. ...

I find all of that rather ironic. The issue is where to draw the line. There is no objective way to determine the exact and unfixed positions for that line, IMO.