Is 'hate speech' protected under the 1st Amendment?

Is 'hate speech' protected under the 1st Amendment?

  • Yes

    Votes: 45 90.0%
  • No

    Votes: 1 2.0%
  • I don't know / Abstain / Other

    Votes: 4 8.0%

  • Total voters
    50
Of course. For example, fraudulent misrepresentations, libel, and slander can be the basis for civil suits regardless of the First Amendment. Fraud can even be a criminal act.

Fraud tends to involve more than someone just communicating something. Even the NAP can make a case against fraud.

As for civil defamation cases, there's a reason they aren't criminal, and that reason happens to be its contention with the "right of free expression." Surely that must qualify as a sort of protection. As I understand it, these types of cases are also notoriously difficult to pursue and prove.
 
As I understand it, these types of cases are also notoriously difficult to pursue and prove.

True enough, but the fact that the law allows civil suits in the first place means that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. You also have Holmes's dictum about falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre and causing a panic, and the hypothetical about conveying battle plans to the enemy during wartime. Surely these actions can be prohibited (indeed, the latter case would constitute treason).
 
Of course it does.
there isn't any need to protect loving speech that 100% of the population agrees with, or which doesnt offend anyone else.
 
Public agents/servants are subject to the constitution. Private organizations are another matter.
 
...but what about yelling fire at a cross burning?

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Is anything protected by the 1st amendment? Or any amendment for that matter?

Good point. All rights and freedoms are actually protected far more brave and strong than anyone who actually gives a shit about the microaggressions spoken by some other kid on a campus.
 
Public agents/servants are subject to the constitution. Private organizations are another matter.

Right, but we should all foster an environment in which free speech is preached and embraced.

Honest expressions of freedom are important, and actual debates based on the free exchange of ideas are the only things that have ever changed the world.
 
The 1st Amendment was for the purpose of protecting unpopular speech. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for it.
 
Offensive speech is the only type of speech that needs First Amendment protection.

"Politically popular speech has always been protected: even the Jews were free to say ‘Heil Hitler.’" - Isaac Asimov

"Hate speech laws usually begin by targeting a few words that almost no one approves. Once the system for controlling and punishing “hate speech” is put into place, there is little or nothing to stop it from expanding to punish more and more types of everyday speech." - James Bovard
 
This is an interesting topic and I hope this discussion stays on topic. If someone is blairing music infront of my house when I'm trying to sleep can I call the police about a noise complaint or would that he violating their freedom of speech? What about threats are they protected by the first amendment?
 
This is an interesting topic and I hope this discussion stays on topic. If someone is blairing music infront of my house when I'm trying to sleep can I call the police about a noise complaint or would that he violating their freedom of speech? What about threats are they protected by the first amendment?

My son has been taught NEVER to call the kops, for any reason.

The simple fact that you would entertain the notion speaks loudly.

Be a man and handle it, or don't, but for Heavens sake don't look to government to be a man in your stead.
 
I abstain because I do not acknowledge "hate" speech as a category of speech, therefore I cannot vote either way on whether it is protected. It's like asking if unicorns like to eat carrots.

Unicorns like carrots.
 
My son has been taught NEVER to call the kops, for any reason.

The simple fact that you would entertain the notion speaks loudly.

Be a man and handle it, or don't, but for Heavens sake don't look to government to be a man in your stead.

Yell at them
 
ALL speech is protected. The 1A is an all-or-nothing deal for reasons one would hope were crystal clear. That it has been interpreted away by the courts to what is now effectively a state-given privilege... well, you know.
 
If someone is blairing [sic] music infront [sic] of my house when I'm trying to sleep can I call the police about a noise complaint or would that he violating their freedom of speech?

The issue is not the speech itself (music), but the method of delivery given a circumstance where one man's right to play that music conflicts with another's right to sleep peaceably in his own home.

ALL speech is protected. That said, the issue of conflict arises when the manner of speech violates another's rights. This should be clear to all. Such violations do NOT, however, include butthurt. When someone says something that "upsets" another, onus lies with the recipient to deal with the utterances like a big boy. For example, if a man refers to a woman as a "stupid cunt", it is completely on the woman if she is "offended" by this. Racial epithets, ethnic slurs, and so forth are all the same insofar as responsibilities for butthurt are concerned.

The only utterances that are exceptions to this general rule are those that constitute "assault". If I tell you that I am going to kill you, it is well within your right to take action to preempt my stated intention to physically attack and harm you. Either way, I do not believe police have too much valid cause to interject themselves into such matters, much less the prosecutorial machinery of the "state".

What about threats are they protected by the first amendment?

IMO, yes they are. Equally protected, however, is my right to draw a pistol and shoot the ghost from your retarded self if you so threaten me, such words constituting legal "assault". Context is, of course, important. If one's older brother says "I'm gonna kill you" in the ways traditional, there would be no basis for gunplay or other acts of violence against the utterer. But when circumstance allows for credibility of the perceived threat, anything goes as far as I am concerned. That is why I am a really big advocate of taking great care with one's words because they are very, VERY important. That we discount them into such cheapness by statute and government policy is a great shame upon us all. They have driven the common man into ever less wise habits of comportment in the presence of their fellows, which is why we are rushing toward the realization of a culture as depicted in "Idiocracy". As human stupidity becomes codified into "law" and men with guns act to enforce the infantility that arises therefrom, the population makes rapid its descent to that ever diminishing denominator. And that, my friends, is precisely what is happening in America right now as I type these sorrow-laden words.
 
Speech is protected unless it's hurtful or mean or violates anyone's safe space
 
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