Hate speech is not free speech

Years ago, when I was in journalism school, one of my required courses dealt with reporting and the law. It was an interesting program, covering topics from official secrets and obscenity to libel and slander.

Perhaps the most useful aspect was learning how different rights and responsibilities in Canada are compared to those of our American colleagues.

I remember when I learned in detail about the five freedoms Americans have protected by the First Amendment. I was most startled, though, at how little U.S. citizens actually knew about their freedoms. A more recent study showed 80 per cent of Americans can name all five “Simpsons” family members while less than two per cent can name four of the five freedoms.

The five freedoms focus on speech, the press, religion, assembly, and petitioning for redress of grievances. In Canada, our Charter protects the following as fundamental rights in Section 2:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

(d) freedom of association.

It is also important to recognize that the Charter starts with a guarantee of the rights and freedoms in Section 1, but also says these freedoms may be “subject only to reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

The weekend before last, someone (or several someones) plastered posters on Memorial University’s campus containing content that many people felt was hate speech against people who are Muslim.

The university administration issued a statement decrying these negative opinions and removed the posters not already taken down by offended members of the university community.

Now one could conclude from a cursory reading of the Charter that the removal of the posters was a violation of our Charter’s protected freedoms. Certainly the individual or individuals who affixed the posters were entitled to their opinions.

However, if your opinions limit the rights of others, then we have to think about what freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression really mean.

That’s where Section 1 comes in. As our society evolves, ideas and principles we once held may be changed or even dismissed as no longer relevant.

Let’s be blunt: free speech does not mean you can say whatever you want, however you want.

Libertarians may see limits as chains on thought. In reality, they are sensible checks and balances at keeping a civil society. (You are free to think anything you want in the confines of your own head. It’s at that line when thought turns to action that our laws come into play.)

One of the key readings we had in my journalism law course was the landmark decision written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. for the U.S. Supreme Court. In that case, Holmes Jr. wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that a limitation of free speech was necessary in certain circumstances. He wrote:

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. (…) The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

We need to be respectful, all the same, of divergent opinions, and to be realistic about knowing the difference between grounded criticism and outright hate.

For instance, someone who challenges the sexism of Sharia law is a world away from, say, someone who urges death or violence to immigrants.

We live in a world swimming with hateful comments. Yet there is an enormous difference between anonymous posters who present hateful comments and a speaker who presents views that are different from your own. When people engage in speech that clearly is false and exists to incite hatred, then we need to recognize that limitations are necessary to protect the rights of others to live freely from discrimination and hatred.