Tax hate groups

Unless they have oil, or they're communists, or they don't like "America", or...etc.

Hate speech is legal in the States? And half of you support that, seriously guys? It's not a slippery slope! I can say anything I want to against my government (not that they care) but if I tried to picket someone's funeral because I didn't like their beliefs, I'd be arrested--and rightfully!

 

So you would be arrested for picketing a politicians funeral if you disagreed with his politics and what he did?

 

I don't think people deserve to die for anything, with bigotry being far from "a reasonable cause to kill someone" (as if there were any).

 

What an unfortunate view.

As a practical matter, I don't think that would happen, because an individual targeted for economic boycott and ostracism to the degree I am advocating for would feel enough pressure to actually change his or her view before being starved out by the group.

The only way homophobia is going to end is when it becomes impossible to have friends, a job, rent an apartment, buy food at the store, while being homophobic.

 

Highly doubt it will ever end entirely, considering we have yet to eradicate racism and sexism. Besides, people don't generally walk into the grocery store advertising their political views, or write an essay on them in a rental application. That sort of economic sanctioning likely won't happen. And even if they did, there will always be someone who values making a buck over any sort of ethics.

 

For the record, I don't believe homophobia will be eradicated unless sexism is also eradicated, but I strongly believe homophobia is actually derivative, not linked. Racism, I feel the same way: it needs to be made unsafe as well.

No, it's true that people don't advertise their views. However, people can get to know them depending on how active they are and the size of the city. I come from a small town, where if I join a hate group and march in the streets, fully a third of the town will almost immediately know. Fred and Shirely Phelps are known around the country, throughout every large city. There are organizations, like Southern Poverty Law Center, that document evidence about individuals and publish their names and likenesses. This is all within the law (it's not slander, because it's true), and I believe that we can and should stack voluntary economic sanctions on those kind of individuals. That said, I admit it's an extremely hard sell, because would take a lot of political commitment and organization.

 

I suppose argument is impossible when two people have such fundamentally different views of human rights.

 

Banning free speech is bad, kids. Very, VERY bad. It seems wrenchingly common-sense to make stuff like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" illegal, but who's the one defining what is hate speech and what isn't? Show me an airtight law and I'll show you a politician who's slimy enough to corrupt it anyway. Soon enough anti-government speech will be hate speech, and they can throw anybody in prison who goes against their personal agenda.

Long story short, we hold up the Constitution as 99% infallible because if it were commonly seen as flawed, it would be immediately turned into a figurative Piece of Eden by an ambitious politician*. It was intended to restrict the government's power, not the populace's.

*As it is, they are just ignoring it anyway, so we need it enforced more than ever.

 

No. Just....no. You seem to ask very strange and controversial questions. Are they facetious, satirical, or genuinely serious?

 

IDK what it is, but it appears to me that our politicians may be scummier than average for whatever reason. I wouldn't trust them even with bad treatment of the KKK.

Perhaps it is BECAUSE the constitution was intended as a limiting document? They feel anything that isn't/shouldn't be off-limits by its wording is sort of a "nyah nyah I do what I want" situation. Just because it's technically legal doesn't mean it's right.