Quote:
Originally posted by smooth
I think the community should decide, as a whole, what is offensive to them.
...
Why this belief that certain rights necessitate offending the community one lives in? It seems to me that an ounce of common sense should be in order--the rights we have were created for a particular end, they aren't ends in themeselves. People should stop thinking of their rights as ends in themselves and contemplate why some behavior is protected, otherwise the point of the right is weakened.
FYI, misdemeanors don't net prison time, so we can stop debating that point.
|
1. I think that if you're talking about standards of decency in a small community, this might be acceptable. In a community the size of a state or a nation, I don't think that the state should be imposing a standard of morality on everyone -- you're going to alienate too many people no matter how you do it, even if they are a "minority."
2. The thing with rights is that people don't agree about what their "particular ends" are. If the right to free speech were intended to be limited to free political speech or free nonhateful speech, I think it would have been articulated as such in the Constitution. I think that one does not have a fundamental right to go around without being offended, and although that would be nice, the dangers inherent in granting the state the right to impose morality through force (including the regulation of speech) does not justify such an offenseless society. I think that as long as one's speech or other mode of articulation does not cause real physical or economic harm (screaming fire in a theater, lying to defraud someone), what you say is your business and if others don't like it they can avoid you. The feeling of disgust does not reach this level of harm -- at least the level of disgust that any sound or image could provoke in an average individual.
3.
Quote:
|
Erica Meredith, 25, was charged Thursday with disseminating matter harmful to minors, a Class D felony, after police saw the painting when she was stopped for driving the 1976 Buick with a broken taillight.
|