Censorship goes local

[M Holmes]

Arjan Hulsebos writes:

> The question at hand is where do you cross the line

Line? What line?

> and becomes what you say
> obscene, blasphemous, xenophobic, homophobic,offensive, whatever?

Nobody has the right to go through life unoffended.,

> Freedom of speech is a Good Thing (TM)

And it means that people will get offended.  There's no two ways about
it.  Freedom of speech means folks can say Jesus is a cunt in Edinburgh
and draw cartoons of Mohammed giving head in Saudi Arabia.  It means I
can put up a "How to build a nuclear bomb" web page.  It means I can
deny the Holocaust in Germany and insult Turkishness in Ankara. 

The fact that there are laws against all of the above simply tells us
that all of those countries have rejected the right of their citizens to
freedom of speech. The fact that speech upsets someone is neither here
nor there. They can argue or they can ignore it and still hold to
believing in FoS. If they pass a law against it however, their own right
to saying what they want went out the window and was replaced with a
government dispensation to say what the government allows them to.

> but the fact that you can say something doesn't
> imply that you should say it.

Indeed. I should have the right to all of the above, but perhaps the
maturity not to.

> Of course, in this case, the Scottish police acted downright stupid.

It's just as well we don't have any real crimes in Edinburgh, or they
might have missed them.

FoFP