Local10.com (South Florida) reported several days ago: The Miami-Dade County school district is looking to evict a pastor who rents space in a public school to preach. … [Pastor Jack] Hakimian preaches and teaches inside North Miami Senior High School every Sunday.In a recent sermon, he compared homosexuality to drug abuse and witchcraft. Other sermons […]
Archive | “Hate Speech”
Federal Court Strikes Down N.Y. City Bus Policy That Bans “Demean[ing]” Speech About Religions, Racial Groups, Etc.
The policy banned exterior bus ads that supposedly “demean an individual or group on account of ‘race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation,’” and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority cited the policy in refusing to run this ad: “Elaborating on the basis for rejecting the AFDI Ad, [the MTA […]
“Negative Gender Stereotypes” and the Need for More Effective “Anti-Hate Speech Legislation”
From a U.N. document describing the response of the Iceland delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Committee (paragraph break added): Iceland had two gender-equality Action Plans, a first that provided for structures within Government and local authorities, and a second on domestic and sexual violence. Research had been conducted within the framework of those plans, […]
State Law to Disqualify Mixed Martial Arts Fighters for “Crimes Involving … Hate Speech”?
AB 2100, which passed an Assembly subcommittee last month by a 5-3 party-line vote, provides, To ensure that individuals and entities licensed under this act observe common standards of decency, the commission shall, in consultation with the Association of Boxing Commissioners, establish a professional code of ethical conduct for mixed martial arts promoters and fighters. […]
Supreme Court of Denmark: Lars Hedegaard Not Guilty of Publicly Insulting Islam, Because His Comments Weren’t Public
Karen Lugo (National Review Online) has the most thorough English-language account that I’ve seen: While deciding to acquit Lars Hedegaard [on April 20], president of the Danish Free Press Society, of intending to speak hatefully for public dissemination, the [Danish Supreme Court] emphatically affirmed a statute according to which anyone who “publicly or with the […]
Debunking Claims of Water Miraculously Flowing from Jesus Statue + Criticizing Catholic Church = Criminal Complaints by Offended Catholic Groups in India
The Mumbai Mirror reports: CR 61/2012, Juhu Police Station, has been filed against miracle-buster Sanal Edamaruku, who is also founder-president of the Rationalist International, which has scientists such as Richard Dawkins in it. The FIR [apparently a First Information Report -EV] has been filed under IPC Sec 295A: Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage […]
“The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Law”
A very interesting analysis by Dr. Jogchum Vrielink (Institute for Constitutional Law at Leuven University in Belgium) of a recent Belgian court decision (though note that I haven’t read the decision myself): “Tintin,” the brainchild of the late Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi (better known as Hergé) is experiencing new and exciting adventures these days. Not […]
Saying “I Don’t Know if Negroes Have Always Worked [Hard]” = Crime in France
Agence France Press reports (thanks to Ed Grinberg for the pointer): A Paris court on Thursday found Jean-Paul Guerlain, the former “nose” behind the world-famous perfume brand, guilty of racial insults after televised remarks he made about “negroes” and fined him. Asked in a 2010 interview about how he created the Samsara scent, Guerlain replied: […]
Organization Calls for Removing The Divine Comedy from School Curricula
From The Telegraph (UK): The [Divine Comedy] should be removed from school curricula, according to Gherush 92, a human rights organisation which acts as a consultant to UN bodies on racism and discrimination. Dante’s epic is “offensive and discriminatory” and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, the group’s president…. It represents […]
Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem Call for Government Suppression of Rush Limbaugh’s Radio Broadcasts
From a CNN op-ed by Fonda, Steinem, and Robin Morgan: Ironically, the misogyny Rush Limbaugh spewed for three days over Sandra Fluke was not much worse than his regular broadcast of sexist, racist and homophobic hate speech …. If Clear Channel won’t clean up its airways, then surely it’s time for the public to ask […]
European Court of Human Rights Upholds Swedish Criminal Convictions for Anti-Gay Leaflets
The case is Vejdeland v. Sweden (Feb. 9, 2012): 8. In December 2004 the applicants [who are adults] … went to an upper secondary school (gymnasieskola) and distributed approximately a hundred leaflets by leaving them in or on the pupils’ lockers. The episode ended when the school’s principal intervened and made them leave the premises. […]
Government Employer Free to Fire Human Resources Officials Who Publicly Criticize the Propriety of Gay Rights Laws
So holds Dixon v. University of Toledo (N.D. Ohio Feb, 6, 2012). (I blogged about this case when it was filed.) A few thoughts: (1) Some of the analysis seems limited to high-level “policymaking” employees, such as a university Associate Vice President. (2) But some of the argument suggests that any time any government manager […]
More Speech That University Administrators and the Student Government Are Supposed to “Dealt With Swiftly and Effectively”
Here’s another London School of Economics Students’ Union resolution: Union believes … 3. Anti-Semitism includes but is not limited to: * Denying, trivializing and misconstruing the Nazi Holocaust. This includes denying the fact, scope, method, or motivation for the genocide of 6 million Jews at the hands of the National Socialist regime. It also includes […]
“Ensure That All Islamophobic Incidents … Either Verbal, Physical or Online Are Dealt with Swiftly and Effectively”
That’s what the London School of Economics Students’ Union — as best I can tell, the British equivalent of a student government here in the U.S. — resolved, with Islamophobia defined to include “hatred or fear of Islam, Muslims, or Islamic culture, and the stereotyping, demonisation or harassment of Muslims, including but not limited to […]
Crime to Have a Racist WiFi Network Name?
The New York Daily News reports: A bigot named their WiFi signal “F— All Jews and N—-” — and now cops are investigating. The hateful signal I.D. popped up on the iPhone of a 28-year-old mom inside a Teaneck, N.J. recreation center, where her 3-year-old daughter was attending dance class…. The Teaneck Police Department Juvenile […]