Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Assuming you were responding to my earlier post, in both cases the speech is about inclusion of a group at school.
You didn't seriously just miss the point like that.
No, I didn't. But I suspect you missed the point I was making.
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I just think that you're walking on a slippery slope when you start limiting speech based not on the words actually spoken, but whether you don't like something the words refer to.
I think you're making up stuff that doesn't exist. I think the idea of "White Student Unions" is asinine but, provided the school required them to accept "allies" (i.e. any non-white student who wanted to join), I wouldn't be against someone wearing a shirt advocating for it. The KKK, on the other hand, is not an inclusive organization. You know this and you're just making yourself look stupid by trying to draw an equivalency between it and your standard "GLBY & Allies" organization.
But the question of speech has to do with the speech itself, not what the speech is about. Your argument is a great one for a school allowing a GSA club but not a KKK club on campus. And you'll get nothing but agreement from me on that btw. But the question I was addressing was about the speech on the t-shirt.
To live in a free society we *must* allow speech that is vastly broader than the actions we allow. We must allow people to advocate for and express their opinions about things we don't agree with and even for things which are illegal. It's what protects a person wearing a "legalize it" t-shirt. Take that freedom away and it becomes impossible to make the very social and legal changes which most of those arguing the wrong side of this presumably support themselves. You throw out the baby and the bathwater.
In case you failed to get it the first several times, I'm *only* talking about the free speech aspect of wearing the t-shirt. And in that context, if we decide that it's wrong for the principle to not allow a student to wear a shirt advocating the creation of a student club, then it must be wrong for any case of a student wearing a shirt advocating the creation of a student club,
regardless of what the club is. It's not free speech otherwise.
Edited, Oct 5th 2011 6:51pm by gbaji