@Scix - Join the club.

My wording was a bit clumsy in my original post. I was meaning to throw in a "in an ideal world" somewhere in there when mentioning a right to live without being mocked. Personally, I don't give a flying fuck what people say as long as words are as far as things go. You don't like a particular race/religion/gender/political affiliation/etc.? Go ahead and bitch about it. If, however, you walk around in bed sheets, vandalize the property of whatever person/group you dislike and/or brutally abuse them, then there's a problem.

...sooo, yeah. Pretty much agree with Mach and Bistro.

Maybe harassed is a better word than mocked in this situation. Mocking I can take. Harassment makes me strike back out of self defense.

This is bunk. You're conflating insulting speech, dangerous information, engaging in controversy, and actual criminal behavior and labeling all of it as being rightfully subject to the chilling effect of political correctness.

Not even close, but my examples were all kinda lame, so I might have to take that one on the chin.

In an attempt to clarify, what annoys me is whenever people have discussions about free speech, they inevitably start talking about the "necessary limitations" that must be placed on it for the good of our society, or trying to establish exactly what is "covered" under our right to free speech. Whereas you are (or should be) allowed to say whatever the hell you want, except if you're doing something obviously illegal and dangerous and directly harmful by speaking, and then ideally you'll either be punished for having done it, or prevented from doing it to begin with.

I don't feel like this implies we should make it a priority to collectively deduce what constitutes "reasonable" free speech, because it leads to a negative perception of what free speech entails and just how extensive and complete our right to it is, (or should be).

Case in point: this thread. Whenever some group of assholes says something stupid or objectionable, some idiot will always seem to mutter about whether homophobia or what have you should be "allowed" under free speech, rather then assessing whether what was said constitutes actual harassment from a legal point of view, or conspiracy to commit a crime, or whether the information that's being provided has a real potential to put someone in physical danger. It might seem like an irrelevent semantic distinction to you, but I strongly feel that it isn't.

And I guess I don't get the point of the discussion if we are, in fact, not doing any of that? If we're just going around and stating what would be the case in an Ideal World, then obviously transexuals would all burn in hell forever alongside Kurt Cobain, Kojak, Mark Twain and Jimi Hendrix's poltergeist, that goes without saying.

And I guess I don't get the point of the discussion if we are, in fact, not doing any of that? If we're just going around and stating what would be the case in an Ideal World, then obviously brits would all burn in hell forever alongside Kurt Cobain, Kojak, Mark Twain and Jimi Hendrix's poltergeist, that goes without saying.

Fixed that for you. >.>