Brazil high court rules homophobia punishable by prison
Brazil high court rules homophobia punishable by prison
Brazil Supreme Court ruling puts homophobic hate speech on the same legal level as racist hate speech, a decision applauded by rights activists in a country with rampant violence against the LGBTQ+ community.
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Nice to see the pendulum swing to an opposite extreme from Bolsanaro... Creating laws to make certain kinds of speech punishable by law certainly won't blow up in the progressive camp's face once another right-wing demagogue is elected, no sir.
Ohh stfu hate speech has always been punishable by law and a demagogue will do whatever they want. Precedent doesn't matter. "You better not strike back or the bully might do something in the future" is the cry of cowards and centrists.
Yes, clearly believing that hearing certain words and phrases is so injurious to human wellbeing that their use needs to be criminalized is the position of the utmost resilience and bravery. How silly of me. These sorts of wokescold laws contribute effectively nothing to the material wellbeing of any kind of marginalized group, and if you honestly believe that there won't be political blowback from this, I think you're out of touch with the general public. Even if the law itself is toothless and cannot be applied maliciously by the other side, the right wing media is going to make hay out of it, riling up millions of blue collar, conservative voters against the perceived excesses of Lula's administration. It blows a lot of a new and somewhat fragile administration's political capital for effectively no material benefit.
@burnedoutfordfiesta lol. The right is doing the same thing look at laws like “don’t say gay” in Florida or banning books in schools bc after decades they are too “woke”. There’s nothing sacred about speech. I believe we should err on the side of allowing more speech, but threats have been criminalized for a long time, and in a lot of places so is defamation. Both sides do this and it doesn’t really affect elections. It takes more than that for people to change their votes. Look at Israel.
Yes, you're absolutely right that the right wing does this, too, and it's just as foolish. The antiwoke culture war has been a massive failure for the American GOP and very likely cost them seats in the midterms. It absolutely affects elections. Trying to police speech is a bad idea in general, regardless of ideology. Threats, defamation, and harrassment are already illegal. New laws like these do not meaningfully protect anyone from those, but they do erode protections for free speech and also piss off vast swathes of the general population, who will usually manifest some political backlash against the party that implemented them. I'm a leftist and I'd prefer not to have Brazil slide back into Bolsanarismo before actually meaningful reforms can be implemented.
As an aside, Lemmy is becoming even worse than Reddit for people being totally unwilling to entertain alternate analyses of politics. Protip: just because someone isn't parroting the same virtue-signaling talking points over and over again, it doesn't make them a Nazi. My account was apparently reported over this conversation, so to whomever did that, good job trying to run me off rather than engage with my arguments, I guess. Enjoy your circle jerk.
@burnedoutfordfiesta we are just going to have to disagree on the effects of these laws on elections. The problem is that people only see these laws as a problem when they disagree with them (by people I mean the middle). On top of that, when you use the power of the state to silence dissidents, people feel like they can’t change things and give up.
@burnedoutfordfiesta For example, I’m not sure why you were reported (I didn’t see anything wrong in your post) and I can appreciate your frustration, but your response is a good example of this. Ending with “enjoy the circle jerk” is exactly the result the result we get from voters.
Fair points. Yeah, I hope it was clear that that last bit wasn't addressed to you, but rather the person reporting me. I appreciate your actually being civil and responding to the points I'm making. I wish that was more the norm.
@burnedoutfordfiesta agreed. There should also be a recognition that this is an imperfect forum for expressing every nuance. My view is that I approach everyone as though they sincerely want to discuss something. They can prove me wrong, but it usually pays off. I get to hear criticisms that I might not ever have considered. I’m mostly on Counter.Social for exactly this reason. No trolling.