[camgunz]

They are related; there's a false equivalency in these arguments between the right to be a racist and the right to be free from racism. On that spectrum, our society is far better at ensuring the former at the expense of the latter, and we need to recalibrate.

Lest you think this is futile, our system of laws and the social contract itself is based on balancing rights. For example, we have the right to free expression, but perjury and fraud are crimes.

In other words, we work too hard to protect bigoted speech, and we don't work hard enough to protect Americans from bigotry and discrimination, and this is at least in part due to the false equivalency we maintain between them. I'm not saying I have a great policy answer -- although allowing civil suits for bigoted speech might work -- but we should at least be talking about it.

[WillPostForFood]

You are actually making the false equivalency. You have the right to live free from discrimination, but not racist speech. These things aren't on a scale to be balanced, they are orthogonal, and each are balanced separately.

[camgunz]

The Masterpiece Bakery SCOTUS case begs to differ. The bakery owner is arguing expression whereas the couple are arguing discrimination. Actually you should read about the case; I feel like you'll learn a lot.

I guess we're both right though? It's not like some rights are never balanced against other ones, but some are more often balanced against each other than others. But expression/religion vs. discrimination is a really common balance, and we get it wrong almost every time.

But I do think I have a right to be free of some speech in some places, and most people do. When protests are organized they have to register with local governments. They don't go into homes, they don't go into workplaces, they don't go into schools or churches. Aside from homes, these are all relatively public places, but protestors don't have a right to protest in them.

In other words, this is the basic concept of negative rights. Positive rights are things like freedom to practice religion, but negative rights are things like freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, "freedom to" and "freedom from".

I also think there is a right to be free from racist speech, though it hasn't been recognized (maybe it has re: dignity). We have a right to be free from violent and threatening speech, for example, and I think racist speech is on the spectrum of violence -- if only because the history of racism is overtly violent. But aside from that, the Supreme Court has (kind of) recognized a right to dignity and racist speech in the public square clearly impugns Americans' right to dignity on a fundamental level. See https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/576/14-556/opini... .