gay bashing and class

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Oct 21 00:22:50 PDT 1998


At 07:08 PM 10/20/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>I do not see the argument against laws restricting freedom of speech to
>>stir up sexuality hatred, like race hatred. The latter have certainly
>>helped in the UK.
>
>Is that your sense of things, Chris, or do you have some hard stats?
>
>Niles

There will be no hard stats about this, and I do not know the soft stats. But civil liberty has been restricted on this point for years now in the UK, and it is very widely accepted to be a good thing even though racist deaths continue. It is a modification of our perfect bourgeois democracy in which a tiny measure of dictatorship is consciously exercised over reactionary elements. It is quite arguable.

Even the most pedantic civil libertarians admit there probably ought to be laws against maliciously shouting "Fire! Fire!" in a crowded cinema. If people are being assaulted and killed on a regular statistical basis what is the argument against controlling the fuelling of such ideas?

Chris Burford



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