| Crono141 said: Laws prohibiting violence protect people from real physical demonstrable harm. It is protecting the freedom of people to not be injured. If I punch someone on the nose, I know for a fact its going to cause them pain, and may break their nose. If I call someone gay online, I don't know if they'll take it as a joke, shrug it off, be offended and commit suicide, or decide to have a rational discussion about the incident. I have NO control over that. The outcome is UNKNOWN, and only ONE of those possible outcomes could be construed as harmful, and there are several that can be construed as beneficial. As for suicide, nobody made that person hang themselves, cut themselves, or shoot themselves. They were all actions the individual chose to take. I don't like bullying, and the people who take part in it are asses, that's for sure. But lets not pretend that someone calling you fat or gay forced you in any way to harm yourself. Under your logic, the guy responsible for the suicide of an investor who lost his fortunes on the stock market rests on the ones responsible for buying his stock and ruining him, not the guy hanging from the rope himself. If you can't handle any of my "verbal flaps", that is not my problem. I have absolutely no control over how you or anyone else will react to what I say. Therefore, any responsibility for actions as a result of how you react to what I say is yours (or theirs). If I did have that kind of control, then you might have a case, but I'm not a psychic or psionic or any other sci-f-/fantasy creature capable of controlling others thoughts and feelings. How you feel about what I say is your problem, not mine. |
Let me put it this way: A man who gets punched in his nose never chose to have his nose bleeding, or to experience the following pain. In a similar manner, people don't choose to be offended or mentally harmed. If people keep getting punched by others (who may also have the right to do so), the victims won't be able to be free in their own societies. If a person or his/her family can't leave their house without facing massive verbal protests against them living there as a minority, they are anything but free. You can't just shake off whatever hateful words people may throw at you, everyone has their unique limit. And the purpose of our laws in our Nordic society is to stop as many approaches to this limit, among our population, as possible. We want people to be free from verbal offences. America? They want people to be able to throw shit at whoever they want, while it's up to the receiver to learn to clean their shitty clothes.
Nothing good can come out of being intentionally offensive.
