Preaching against homosexuality is definitely not illegal across the EU. There's a group of people doing it on the streets at every damn Pride event in the UK - at quite some expense to the taxpayer too, since they wind up having a number of police officers stationed near them.
If you were to read, well, any source posted since then, you'd find that it was found that he was actually protected on appeal by the ECHR freedom of expression (aka freedom of speech) and freedom of religion.
> There's a group of people doing it on the streets at every damn Pride event in the UK - at quite some expense to the taxpayer too, since they wind up having a number of police officers stationed near them.
Not that this is false (I have no knowledge either way), but... spinning it this way, like people are to blame for the costs of protecting them from violent retaliation against their speech, feels distasteful to me.
Ah, I didn't mean it that way - I merely meant that this is something that the country explicitly puts resources towards protecting, not something that it "puts up with", as a direct rebuttal of the argument that the EU as a whole is strongly against the rights to expression and religion.
A harmless feature, here, is a physical or behavioral property which is not meant to affect you.
Saying "I hate doctors" is not hate speech, for instance, because doctors want to cure you. It is a case of them causing physical harm (eg. through vaccines) which is socially beneficial.
Saying "I hate disabled people" is hate speech, because they're not disabled to spite you.
Saying "I hate disabled people" is hate speech, because they're not disabled to spite you.
This is an opinion and I would be very surprised if this is illegal in any European country. It's certainly not hate speech. You may just out yourself as a complete asshole and rightfully suffer social consequences if you use such speech.
Now, saying something like "Disabled people are the scum of the earth and should be eradicated" would probably fall under hate speech laws in some jusidictions.
Note the qualitative difference of the statements.
And yet saying "I hate disabled people" does nothing to harm disabled people. I'd much rather people have the freedom to say stupid, harmless things, so everything knows they're idiots and can ignore them on things that actually matter, than be left with people who still feel that way but are simply smart enough to keep their mouth shut.
verbally attacks a person or group on the basis of harmless features of theirs...A harmless feature, here, is a physical or behavioral property which is not meant to affect you.
Ok, so we just banned discussing politics, religion and basically anything that deals with human relations because it's "hate speech".
In my mind it's always been the difference between saying:
<jews/muslims/immigrants> are a problem, and saying I _think_ that <jews/muslims/immigrants> are a problem.
The same goes for insulting police officers. You can report your state of mind, but you can't use a descriptive tense, you need to explicitly state that it is your opinion.
I haven't ever been in trouble of this sort of thing, and I also think that almost every human knows when real hate-speech is being bandied about. But I do know that a few years back the courts in the Netherlands ruled that if you tell a police officer: 'you're a fag' you can't defend yourself by saying it was just an opinion.
The problem with that is it supports one position over another no matter what the circumstances. What you're saying means that the only correct position is to support ever loosening restrictions on immigration. You can't ever go the other way, can't even discuss it.
That is far more worrisome then me then the supposed reincarnation of Hitler in orange form.
Christ, if Hitler isn't the new devil, capable of possessing people at random and these aren't the new Salem witch trials, I don't know what is.
Saying that Holocaust never happened is only illegal in Germany, elsewhere it can be persecuted as hate speech, but that's not explicitly written into law. And if preaching against homosexuality was illegal in the EU, then 90% of Polish priests would be in prison :P
My point is - EU does not enforce this. Individual countries do, and they follow their own rules.
Hate speech however is a bit of a weird topic. I am kind of extreme side on anti-censorship and agree that this is a problem (despite it's practical implications are minor - currently). I wished that people could say things like "our democracy is strong enough" and a person claiming the holocaust didn't happen would simply ridicule themselves, just like someone saying the earth is flat.
However, one also has to say that the effects of hate speech in the EU (likely to be ruining your career and similar things) are really close to the the effects of certain political statements in the US, like when you openly mention good thing about communism, speak badly about soldiers/veterans, don't act like the American flag is sacred, etc.
That said I think a good measure of a society is whether you can make "bad jokes" without fear. Usually actions against those are the beginning of an authoritarian system. I don't talk about actual bullying of non-public figures here. That may be coming close to an attack, when it goes into the direction of driving people to suicide or so, even though that's really far sometimes and people of course also need some skins if they consider themselves to be emancipated.
Anyway, I think free speech is way too often attacked for really minor reasons, when it should be withstand even rather good reasons, or else we cannot call it a right of the citizens of a country.
Also I think that people should focus on the now, even when they try to learn from the past. Currently action is taken against people that talk like Nazi Germans from 70+ years ago, when people that act in a similar, but maybe technologically more modern way are completely under the radar.
If you were to read, well, any source posted since then, you'd find that it was found that he was actually protected on appeal by the ECHR freedom of expression (aka freedom of speech) and freedom of religion.