Chris,
The effect of laws prohibiting hate speech would be to allow the state to determine what speech is hateful and which is not. To me this is the cusp. There is a world of difference between Doug tossing someone off this list for being a troll, or people hurling rotten tomatoes at a reactionary shitferbrains and giving the state wide ranging powers to determine what forms of speech it defines as acceptable. Inevitably hate speech laws would be used to suppress leftists. Leftists have much more to lose from censorship than anyone on the right. Not only are bourgeois rights not absolute, but the state that enforces those rights is structurally racist, sexist and heterosexist at its core.
Besides, occasionally when people are hurling stuff at the Phelps clan every once in awhile they miss and hit a cop.
Sean Noonan seanno at ksu.edu