Two Views on Speech
In plain English, hate-speech laws are based on the simple truth that there is a huge difference between an insult and a threat, and that it isn’t actually that hard to tell one from the other.
.. Saying that someone’s religion is ridiculous is different—discernably, measurably, significantly different—from saying that some group should be exterminated. Mocking your prophet is not at all like threatening your person.
.. Saying that someone can’t pretend in public that the Holocaust didn’t happen is a way of saying that you can’t pretend Jews weren’t murdered for being Jews. A view of free speech that allows, as one French minister has said, “Three minutes for the Nazis, three minutes for the Jews” makes Jews vulnerable again by granting reason and plausibility to their persecutors.
.. The rest of us can recognize that mocking a faith is not the same as speaking in ways that threaten a new massacre, or condone an old one.