Laws that bring out the bigot in me
Laws that constrain free speech bring out the childish bigot in me
An alarming increase in legislation that constrains free speech
As for me, for the first time in nearly 40 years I am gripped by an urge to walk down my local high street and shout ‘poofter!’ and ‘bumboy!’ at the first people I see. I am aware that this is a childish and petulant response to what is, after all, merely another government attempt to make us love and respect one another and enforce this aspiration through the deployment of ever more police officers. It is not simply the assault upon our freedom of speech — although this freedom seems to diminish with every month that passes. It is the utter pointlessness of it, the continual urge to clog up our over-burdened legislature with more laws, regardless of how futile and contradictory they might seem. And indeed, counterproductive. Nobody really cares that an ever-dwindling minority of evangelical Christians believe homosexuality to be on a par with murder. Most normal people view such beliefs as absurd and vindictive. But beliefs they nonetheless are, and when they come under official assault it is truly difficult to resist forming common cause with the Stephen Greens of this world, and the mad mullahs.
In other words, the legislation creates the very thing it supposedly has been introduced to prevent — a feeling of resentment and anger towards a minority group which, hitherto, had the majority of the population on its side.
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Lewis Reich
October 10th, 2007 8:37pm"According to a friend of mine, a school in south London recently attempted to counter incipient homophobia among its students by instituting severe penalties for anyone heard using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory manner. So the kids stopped screaming ‘gay’ at one another. Now they shout out ‘Jew’ instead." I imagine it remains to be seen whether there will be any attempt to counter incipient antisemitism.