Sounds like a potential for a lot of bs lawsuits.  I suppose what I mean is how you look at the word slander.  Slander could mean very different between two people although it shouldn't.  For instance something that is a little disturbing in the wikipedia page on defamation is that it states "It is usually a requirement that this claim be false".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation

That I find pretty damn disturbing considering it should be always false.  If a statement is true then how the hell can they sue over it?   Anyways, the defenition gets better explained later on the page but that part just caught my eye since I already consider some people may not be able to come to the same conclusion on the definition.

I agree with you, but I think that the vast majority of "Hate Speech" cases are not that different from slandering an individual except that they're targeting an group of people. While there is potential for abuse, these kinds of lawsuits are rarely abused when it comes to individuals because it is difficult to prove (and certain conditions need to exist in order to have a viable case).

From what I have seen in human rights tribunals in Canada, there is far more room for abuse in the kind of pseudo-legal system that can be formed to deal with these kinds of complaints.

Hell, there have always been issues where faith would try to influence politics.

Poland is a funny example in this case. It's no secret that the majority of the citizens are christians, probably half the nation is catholic. This gives the church and their representatives a lot of space for public demands on certain problems like abortions, gay relationships etc.

In Poland we have a guy called Jerzy Owsiak that organizes massive charities for all kinds of purposes, starting with feeding the poor and ending with buying some hospitals brand new equipment so that they could open a new ward for sick children.

And every effing year the church goes on that this guy is a menace to society because he worships the devil, that he's a crook, that he kills baby seals and whatever else they can think of. They try to cancel his charities by claiming that the people gathering the money are used as slaves and whatnot. Worst of all? 5 years ago when Poland was ruled by a right winged conservative party, filled to the brim with "righteous catholics", the politicians tried to cancel his charity and put him in jail using the same arguments the church does.

Yes, pulling faith into politics is actually the worst that can happen.

War is strong.

However the has been quite a number of ridiculous things aimed square at peoples right to practice their religion, and in many cases, just basic historic symbolism due to... really secular bigotry.

For example, you can't have the ten commandments outside of a courtroom, despite there being historically speaking EXTREMELY significant to ancient laws and American Culture.

However the most common decoration outside of a courtroom is Themis a greek goddess.

This is largely done under the premise of "Seperation of Church and State" by people who don't understand what that means.

To quote Jefferson.

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.""

So essentially, the banning of religious items in federal buidlings would be like suggesting that we not allow any portraits of white people due to the "Seperate but equal" being illegal clause