Free Speech VS. Hate Speech essays

Free Speech VS. Hate Speech essays Most Americans would like to think that the United States is a place open to diversity with room for everyone. The fact is, hate is a huge block to this vision, and the atrocities of Mathew Shepard and James Byrd grow by the day increasing the search for a remedy. We used to be able to ignore people who spoke of hate because they wore white hoods and had meetings in secluded places. Now, people like Eminen and John Rocker can speak hate over the television, radio, and especially the Internet (Goldstein, 2000). This new form of hate speech has caused much debate and controversy because every where a person looks some form of hate is being spoken. Some institutions have tried to curb hate speech by instituting speech codes, which try to eliminate hate speech. However, these speech codes have been confronted by much debate. Whether or not people need to be censored is a question asked by many in the debate between The First Amendment, which guarantees Civil liberties, and The Fourt eenth Amendment, which guarantees Civil rights. Civil rights vs. Civil liberties. In short, is hate speech protected under the rights and liberties of the constitution. Hate Speech is a very troubling matter for those who believe in the right to Free Speech and expression. They want to stop the hate, but at the same time, maintain the constitution. Many have tried to define hate speech as that which offends, threatens, or insults groups based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or a number of other traits (McMasters, 1999). However, what might be easy to define for scholarly or general discourse would simply not be adequate enough to put into law. McMasters (1999), gives several reasons why hate speech is so hard to define. First, "is the definition in terms of what the speech reflects, such as bigotry, bias, prejudice, anger, or fear? Or is it a matter of what the speech conveys: intimidation, vil...