[mbork_pl]

Thanks. Please note that I explicitly don't want to make _rude_ comments – apparently, it is enough that someone is _offended_ by my comments. (And yes, I know that you said "potentially rude", but still – rudeness has little to do with it.)

[Zak]

It's not quite about whether the person reading is offended. It's about whether a "reasonable person" would find it likely to "stir up hatred" against one of the protected classes.

Of course, that's still highly problematic. Is a statement like "Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to replace secular democracy with a theocracy based on a twisted interpretation of Christianity" likely to stir up hatred against fundamentalist Christians? It's ambiguous enough to have a chilling effect.

[krapp]

Can a statement of fact even be considered hate speech?

Also "Christian fundamentalist" isn't a protected class. If anything they're the class many protected classes need protecting from.

[Zak]

The way this law is written relies on a test of whether a "reasonable person" would consider the statement "abusive". If a police officer decides it is, then you're having a bad day even if a judge or jury later decides it is not. Regardless of one's position on hate speech laws in general, this hate speech law is at risk for subjective interpretation.

Religion is a named protected class in the legislation. There is no reason to believe it couldn't be applied to extreme or fundamentalist religions, and I chose a particularly contemptible example of it to illustrate a point.