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Originally Posted by demonrail666

That ACLU statement is of course fundamentally correct in terms of universities, although it unnecessarily complicates the issue by drawing on examples from children's education. Even I believe there are limits to what's appropriate for discussion in a school. However universities are a different matter, or at least should be. Within adult higher education, no ideas should be considered off limits based on their potential to offend, so long as they're discussed in a responsible, adult manner.

what’s wrong with the kid’s gay cousin? he can’t be mentioned? marriage equality can’t be mentioned? we’re talking about civil liberties, not pornography.

i think the problem you’re facing is that your country is more comfortable with censoring speech as a whole, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

e.g., i understand your libel laws are much stronger. here in america defamation lawsuits are much harder to bring forward because of the first amendment.

you also have laws against racist speech, yes? i remember for example that when suárez was going to be fined for some purported racist statements, some english boardies were okay with that. i was surprised.

melly i think was also in favor of banning someone here for political reasons, i remember. the americans said fuck no, let’s best them with words.

when i asked for the curbing of the mentally ill gast on the board it was on the basis that he impeded the functioning of the board. he clogged up the works with endless nonsense and buried every thread. it was outright spam. but the shit only hit the fan with him when his imbecilities veered toward the racist/homophobic spectrum. i’d rather he had kept his ignorant dribbles in a single thread.

loco tesla seems to have been banned, i am not sure why. he used to cry about himself being “bullied” and his free speech rights, but we only ever countered his speech with speech. nobody ever threatened him with a beating or anything of that sort. he was just full of shit. not sure why the ban happened.

then again of course this board is a private concern, not a government entity, so first amendment does not apply here, and owners can make whatever rules they see fit—i’m just pointing out apparent cultural differences, even though they’re just drawn from anecdotal observation.

now let’s talk about guns...

haahaaa, but for real, i don’t know how free speech works (or doesn’t) in your country, or what legal protections it has, nor in what contexts. i don’t know shit about canadian law either.

i know you can’t have your cake and eat it too, though.

Originally Posted by demonrail666

If students are arguing that there's no intellectual relevance to what someone's there to talk about, or that the speaker lacks the intellect necessary to make it, then yes, there's a case. But not if the only grounds given are that they find the topic or them offensive.

and that’s what i’m talking about, the schrödinger cake. that’s a slippery slope right there.

if you support an authority deciding what is/isn’t intellectually relevant or who is/isn’t smart enough to have an opinion, then you don’t really support free speech.

you have to take the good with the bad to uphold that freedom.

otherwise any censor can just deem anything they want to suppress “intellectually irrelevant” or “low i.q.”

i’d rather let imbeciles speak and call them imbeciles afterwards. actually, i often do, lmao—see my posts in the trump thread. i’ve called illiterates by their name. but that’s speech vs. speech, not censorship.

first amendment ftw