Does Free Speech Include Reciting Hate-Filled Bible Passages?

If reading passages from the Bible (or any other book) in public that have hateful content should be illegal, should publishing them be illegal?

While I disagree whole heartedly with the message itself, I don’t think it is productive to try to shut these people up. Just as creationist censorship on youtube only serves to backfire and prompt a proliferation of the censored material, trying to silence the wackos, I suspect, will only enrage their ilk.

I think a better response is to point and laugh at these people and their ridiculous beliefs. Indeed, they are the best parody of themselves.

My bottom line is that as long as they aren’t threatening anyone, let their lunacy speak for itself.

I’m sorry, but I completely disagree. Opinions should never be silenced, regardless of how hateful they may be. Nobody has the right to not be offended, but everybody has the right to speak their mind.

It depends on the exact circumstances and verses, but I would err on the side of free speech unless they were clearly trying to incite violence.

I do think, however, that there’s a gray area where someone isn’t exactly yelling “fire” in a crowded building, but they’re clearly setting up a scenario in which someone is endangered, through their speech. Back when George Tiller was murdered, I felt that some of the tactics certain pro-life factions/individuals used were very close to that line.

Reiterating over and over that abortion is murder, calling Tiller “Doctor Death” and posting his photo, and making it painstakingly clear that no one in law enforcement was going to stop Tiller from “murdering” over and over again, they (purposefully or not) essentially followed a recipe to get Tiller killed by fanatics.

I still think that all those individual elements of free speech were acceptable and legal. And I’m not sure if I think that anything should have been done about the combination, but I do think that while we protect free speech, we should be taking careful note of it.

Does anyone know what it is they were actually saying? The article never makes it clear and it’s hard to tell if they were enticing people to violence without the quotes of what they actually said. The fundies arrested claim they were just quoting from the bible but the article also said they were making additional comments which seems to imply something else was also going on. So, I was wondering if anyone knew what their actual words were before we jump to conclusions on either side, speaking as a gay atheist here.

Limiting free speech is always a slippery slope argument. Saying that preaching the literal bible is hate speech could easily be turned around to say that teaching evolution is hate speech against those who believe in creation.

I say if its not libel, or words that can cause physical harm (yelling fire), then all speech should be allowed. The best way to deal with loons like these guys is to go laugh at them. Once you ban them, they become martyrs.

It is hard for me to be okay with any opportunity people take to quote verses from the Bible out of context to make them say whatever they want them to say. I do not agree that it should be outlawed, but it is reprehensible!

Time for Hemant to take a remedial course in First Amendment law.

If you stood out on a street corner and started saying that gay people should be killed or made racially-charged remarks about slavery, it would be considered hate speech and you could be arrested.

Not in America. That’s protected speech unless it was an incitement to violence.

Where do you draw the line?

Dude, we’ve got 200 years of jurisprudence explaining exactly where that line is drawn. Educate yourself.

I recommend The First Amendment and the Fourth Estate, by T. Barton Carter. Great textbook.

I also recommend Speech Acts and the First Amendment, by Franklyn S Haiman.

From the description of the latter:

Unlike totalitarian or theocratic societies that see no difference between their concept of morality and the law, however, a democracy must make a distinction between what it regards as immoral and what it makes illegal. Haiman maintains that in the realm of symbolic behavior the line between them should be drawn as closely as possible to expression that results in the most serious, direct, immediate, and physical harm to others. Thus, he joins with former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in concluding that, absent an emergency, more speech, not enforced silence, should be the aim of a free society.

Thus, he joins with former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in concluding that, absent an emergency, more speech, not enforced silence, should be the aim of a free society.

To reference your point, Hemant, the difference between shouting “fire” and “God likes Slavery” is that one constitutes an immediate emergency situation with possible death by trampling in a crowded place, and the other doesn’t.

Incitement to criminal violence is where I draw the line. Fred Phelps is a master of skirting the line. He claims that homosexuals should be killed (ie, the law should be changed to make homosexuality a capital crime) but he does not advocate that individuals commit illegal violence. His views are as legal as they are reprehensible.

I think John Stuart Mill went into this as well. You should not outlaw ideas of what the law should be, merely illegal behavior and incitement to illegal behavior.

The test is not just incitement to criminal activity – a lot of speech could be viewed as that. The speech must present an imminent incitement to criminal activity. So, the lone wacko on a street corner advocating some hate speech is far different from someone in an angry crowd.

By the way Hemant: the fundamentalists like to push to their sheep this false idea that “hate speech” has been outlawed and/or that we are trying to outlaw it, and that this will be used to put ministers in jail. This article of yours disturbs me because it plays right into their hands, and they can use it as “proof” of their false statements. I recommend you consider such things more carefully before posting in the future.

I support hate speech.

I personally think that the quoting of Bible is protected under free speech. Plus, them out on the street, yelling and acting like “good christian” (*cough cough* insane *cough cough*) people makes for some amusing entertainment, and may even get us some more agnostics/atheists (Hell, it was the fire and brimstone hate-filled speeches that my mom made against gays/any other kind of faith/non-faith [which made me depressed as hell back then since I am gay] that made me start to think towards Atheism).

Let them go out and “preach for the good people”…then let the good people go home and see that the preacher’s radical ilk are nothing more than blowhards with a very loud voice.

I suspect if everyone who disagreed with their speech just rolled their eyes and gritted their teeth, kept walking and ignored them, they’d just leave eventually. I’d bet that very few people were won over by their speech. They probably got a lot of negative attention, which (to an attention-seeker) is better than no attention at all. Now the media has given them a huge audience, which is just what they wanted. If we start down that slippery slope towards censorship the nutcases win.

If society treats them as any good parent would treat an obnoxious tantrum-throwing toddler – by simply ignoring them – society wins on many levels. And we don’t impinge on our own hard-won freedoms in the process.

If you don’t like what they have to say, speak with your feet, unless they really are inciting violence. These sidewalk evangelical goofballs are not the start of some insidious plot to deprive the good citizens of the free world of their rights! They embarrass most Christians!

Perhaps we should start a Ghandi-esque worldwide movement towards studiously and systematically ignoring people who are saying hateful things. Consciously encourage [sane] people NOT to react to these cranks. Don’t try to reason with them. Don’t engage them at all. Don’t honor their drivel with a response. Don’t call the police and martyr them. Just move on. A concerted deliberate and silent disapproval. Mature society can just give them the collective cold shoulder. Let them just fade into obscurity within a couple of hours, rather than allowing them to make international headlines.

Or perhaps I’m too idealistic… even I would probably have a hard time not stopping and gawking in dismay if I saw this pair on the street!

The lesson here is that if your going to say hate full things, write it down first.

It would have been interesting for someone to scribble down on paper something hateful to the preachers and shout it back at them; to show the cops their obvious double standard.

But i agree that letting these people speak is the best way to allow moderate theists to distance themselves from the bible. Then maybe we can finally stick a R18 sticker on it or at least put it in the fiction section.

The freedom-of-speech argument is a good one, and one that needs to be given proper weight against the opposing argument that incitement to violence ought to be prevented.

I don’t really mind which way the judgement goes on this one, just as long as no special allowance is made on the basis that the text in question is the Bible.

Above, the question was raised about whether publishing texts that include such things ought to be illegal. Again, texts such as the Bible ought to be banned under the law if another book with similar incitement to violence would be banned under existing law. That is to say, Christians shouldn’t be allowed to be scofflaws.

However, since the Bible can be a useful educational text, I believe it should be sufficient for all published Bibles to have a disclaimer from the publishers that they disagree with all of the incitements to criminal activity contained within. The same should apply to any old text that is educational, but which is also used for evil by groups today (e.g. Mein Kampf).

I think it is important to point out that England is not America. Fairly obvious you might say, your buses aren’t a proper red, no-one wears a bowler hat and you have those intolerable accents.

We have no constitution of protected rights in England, we have no law that defines our freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The closest we have is the Bill of Rights 1689 that protects the freedom of speech in Parliament which does not extend to the people. We have specific laws that limit the oppression of certain rights but nothing that grants an automatic right. Nor do we have the right to “peaceably assemble” without registering the reason for assembly with the police.

I know, we’re oppressed in a totalitarian state, we live with it.

What we do have are laws that protect minority groups (homosexuals, members of different races, religions, etc) from persecution. We also have laws against causing a public nuisance or inciting others to perform violence. It is a convoluted mess of legalistic jargon and poorly understood rights and restrictions.

What Hayworth and father were doing was staging an unauthorised demonstration against a minority group. This is allowed if they do not commit an offence against them or incite others to commit an offence. They were not arrested but were asked to move on as they were coming close to breaching the law. They could have insisted on carrying on and risked arrest but they didn’t. Were the police overstepping their authority? Possibly but I personally think they are right to tell someone that they are likely to break the law if they continue in some action. It saves an awful lot of paperwork back at the station.

Oh and tucked away in the original article are the some of the verses they were reading:

Romans 1:27, from the King James Bible, which says: “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly…”

1 Corinthians 6: 9, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.”

Most of what I would add has already been said, so I’ll try to keep this short.

First, I never want to give a group of people the power to decide what is truth. I don’t want Christians to have a monopoly on truth, and I don’t want homophobes to have a monopoly on the truth, but I also don’t want atheists or… um, not-homophobes to have a monopoly, either. My chief guiding principle is “I might be wrong,” and having access to opposing viewpoints is the only way to discover when I am.

Second, letting these people talk is the best way to win new atheists. I left my beliefs behind mainly because I know so much about the Bible. Verses that punish homosexuality as if the person had committed murder, and verses that punished the victims of rape, were key in making me realize that the Bible was not inspired by a wise, loving god.

So let them preach. They’re doing our work for us.

Thanks cat. I do agree with you. I just wanted to point out the difference between American and English law.

I wonder though if they may have been moved on for their own protection. There are some people who react negatively to being judged and belittled by homophobic bigots who might be tempted to take the law into their own hands. That would be a bad thing.

If you’re interested there are some interesting reactions to the introduction of the law that limited ‘unauthorized demonstration’ in Parliament Square. One man, Brian Haw, has been protesting there for 8 years and may be the reason for the law in the first place. Another protester organised a “Protest what you like” protest just to inundate the local police station with paperwork and embarrass the government for failing to administer the law.

We may not have the right of free speach but we still claim it. What I think that Hayworth and father should have done was to insist on their right to speak and forced the police to arrest them. Once the police had warned them they could have obstinately refused to move on. That would have given them the press to put forward not only their views (distasteful as they are) but also to champion the right to free speech. Few people actually have the courage of their convictions though.

Tony! Another Mancunian, hello there.

Manchester often has crazy street preachers on market street, one of the biggest shopping streets. Generally people ignore or mock them. The mocking can be hilarious sometimes.

These weirdos in St Anns square were probably moved on for their own good. We have a large and confident gay scene in Manchester and a large Muslim population too. I can’t imagine either taking verbal abuse in public lightly. While violence is extremely unlikely, the cops probably just wanted to stop a situation arising before it got noisy.

If these guys were drawing many hecklers, then disturbing the peace is a perfectly arrestable crime.

As Hoverfrog mentioned we have far less free speech rights over here than you lot in the colonies do. But we do have a patchwork quilt of laws that tend to serve pretty well to protect minorities.

The only time free speech is abused over here is protesting against the government itself. Parliament banned protests outside parliament during the most unpopular stages of the Iraq war, which is such a blatant abuse of power.

That said, the stop the war marches were the biggest public demonstrations ever held in the UK and achieved precisely nothing. Clearly protest needs to be followed up by action. I’m all for hassling MPs, mass protest their offices, call their phones, flood their email. Do something to get their attention and pull their heads out of their arses.

Why do people quote the bible as if it were law?

It is only a book, and in the eyes of the law it has no more relevance than a cookery book or any other book.

And let’s face it, the old testament is as hate filled, homophobic, and misogynist as you can get.

Hate speech is detestable, but mostly irrelevant as the vast majority do not give it any creedence. Who cares? Let the nutters say what they like and laugh at them.