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The Controversy Of Banning Free Speech Or Hate Speech

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By definition there is a significant difference between free speech and hate speech, but what people consider to be either varies and the lack of differentiating the two is the root of many recent debates. The freedom of speech is known as “the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or sanction.” While hate speech is recognized as “speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, national origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.” What is considered offensive can be very subjective. While it is reasonable to ban or censor hate speech because of its nature, banning speech that is simply offensive to some is not reasonable because anything can be offensive to anyone if they choose to take offense.
When does free speech end and hate speech begin? Everyone in the US has freedom of speech because of the first amendment which protects that right. Hate speech is constitutionally protected as freedom of speech. What this means is that hate speech is still a part of free speech, even though hate speech may be different from regular speech. Legally whether or not it …show more content…

Banning hate speech and or offensive speech would be going against the first amendment and this leads to the belief that if the government partially gets rid of free speech, it would be destroying all of it. Since what exactly is classified as hate/offensive speech is not specifically distinguished anything could be labeled as either hate or offensive speech. Who would get to decide what qualifies as hate speech and should be censored? How can we be certain that the people who decide these things won’t abuse their power to silence opinions and legitimate criticism? These are important question to have in mind because the answer to them are what make a great

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