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Originally Posted by punky
You're moving the goal posts here from a private performance (even on thought it is on TV) to someone. It is entirely different having a BNP support standing on a soapbox in a high street telling outright racist jokes and Richard Pryor telling them in a theatre of paying customers. Hence my "Likeminded people should be able to share like-minded jokes" comment.
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No, I'm not shifting the goalposts. I'm trying to discover where
you've put them, by exploring the absolute which you used earlier: namely, your use of the word 'always', when quoting and agreeing with comments made by Ignition: "Freedom of speech should
always trump peoples' sense of offense."
I deliberately asked you if you would define the boundaries, if any, or whether you considered 'always' to be truly absolute, because I wanted to establish whether you were defending freedom of speech in private surroundings or whether you were making a case for people being free to say whatever, wherever, whenever.
It appears that the extent of your proposition is actually that "[Where comments are made in surroundings that could reasonably be construed to be 'private'], freedom of speech should always trump peoples' sense of offense."
Please correct me if I have misunderstood your position.
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And I find your comment about communities of ethnic minorities getting together and deciding what is offensive or not to be just bizarre really.
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Perhaps you find it difficult because you're grappling with something that I didn't actually say.
I used the word 'community'; I did not qualify it with the term 'ethnic minority', or anything else.
My use of 'community' was a very broad one, intended to describe any identifiable group or possibly a society as a whole.
Personally I do not subscribe to the idea that individualism trumps everything else. Society, via its Government, is entitled to legislate against behaviour it disapproves of. The things society disapproves of shifts over time and so do the laws that reflect that disapproval.