Spain court bans atheist march on Holy Thursday

  • Thread starter Thread starter Abyssinia
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
cornbread_r2 said:
I don’t think people have a right not to be offended for their religious ideas – even really, really offended. To rephrase my earlier post: Inoffensive speech doesn’t need to be protected.

What I find most disturbing about this is that the mere possibility that some people might violently – and illegally – deny the rights of the marchers to march was enough for the court to deny the marchers their right to march. That seems pretty messed up to me. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, that’s exactly the justification used by Isabella and Ferdinand and others for their various Inquisitions, i.e. heresy/atheism/non-belief disturbs public order; the state has a duty to preserve public order; the state has a duty to suppress heresy/atheism/non-belief. (Maybe that – and Franco – explains why Spanish atheists might be more aggressive.)
Click to expand...
The people have a right to be protected from violence of hate crimes.
 
I assume none of you would have a problem with a Catholic Parade on the International Day of Atheists, if such a day existed.
 
cornbread_r2 said:
I
What I find most disturbing about this is that the mere possibility that some people might violently – and illegally – deny the rights of the marchers to march was enough for the court to deny the marchers their right to march.
Click to expand...
Hmmm… I don’t think that is the case. Granted its been a few months since this ruling, and my memory of the circumstances have faded, but the article in the first post mentions that the march was prohibited to avoid offense on a religious holiday, not because of threat of violence.

Granted, last spring there were incidents of violence and vandalism, committed by atheists and allied groups, against Catholic chapels on several university campuses i Spain. And those incidents may have played into the judge’s decision to prohibit the march. But if there is a news source mentioning the concern of violence, I would appreciate reading it.

Cornbread, I see you are in the US. Here in the States we give a very large latitude to free speech rights. It is one of the distinctive aspects of our culture, much like our love for guns. However, in Canada, the UK, and most of Western Europe, free speech of individuals is curbed if it seems excessively offensive/harmful to others. The limit on free speech is present to protect the common good.

I can appreciate your sentiments, and generally agree with the high emphasis we Americans place on individual liberty, even when it conflicts with the interests of others. However, I don’t think Spain is any different in its approach than you will find in most Western democracies. It is the US which is the outlier here.
 
Dale_M said:
Hmmm… I don’t think that is the case. Granted its been a few months since this ruling, and my memory of the circumstances have faded, but the article in the first post mentions that the march was prohibited to avoid offense on a religious holiday, not because of threat of violence.

Granted, last spring there were incidents of violence and vandalism, committed by atheists and allied groups, against Catholic chapels on several university campuses i Spain. And those incidents may have played into the judge’s decision to prohibit the march. But if there is a news source mentioning the concern of violence, I would appreciate reading it.

Cornbread, I see you are in the US. Here in the States we give a very large latitude to free speech rights. It is one of the distinctive aspects of our culture, much like our love for guns. However, in Canada, the UK, and most of Western Europe, free speech of individuals is curbed if it seems excessively offensive/harmful to others. The limit on free speech is present to protect the common good.

I can appreciate your sentiments, and generally agree with the high emphasis we Americans place on individual liberty, even when it conflicts with the interests of others. However, I don’t think Spain is any different in its approach than you will find in most Western democracies. It is the US which is the outlier here.
Click to expand...
From the article: “That office had argued among other things that the march planned in the Lavapies district of Madrid would pass by several Catholic churches and could trigger clashes with conservative Catholics. The court also said it is necessary to “protect the tourist image” of the city.”

I took the bolded part above to mean violent clashes. If it doesn’t mean violent clashes, then I think the court had even less reason not to permit the atheists’ march.

I fully support that societies have the right to place limits on speech that threatens life (yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater), reputation (slander and libel) or liberty (terroristic threatening), but I cannot support limits designed to protect another’s ideas or feelings. If the Spanish atheists have acted violently in the past, then I can understand why the authorities might deny the permit. But if the “common good” that is being protected in this case is just the sensibilities of religious people, then I stand by my objection.

I realize the US is the outlier in these matters and I’m very glad that we are. Terms like “excessively offensive/harmful” are too vague and subjective IMO to render them anything other than springboards for mischief.

Thanks for the discussion.
 
Dale_M said:
Certainly that was a victory for free speech, but was it a victory for the common good? Is speech an absolute right? What are the proper limits on free speech?
Click to expand...
Agreed, but can we trust government to fairly and justly make such distinctions?
 
NewEnglandPries said:
Agreed, but can we trust government to fairly and justly make such distinctions?
Click to expand...
If we go by Canada’s provincial Human Rights Commission rulings about clergy writing about Christian teaching on homosexuality, or the recent case of a police department in England telling a cafe owner to stop airing a DVD of the Bible, then there is certainly cause for concern. On the other hand, those situations seem to have have been overreach and were later corrected. Perhaps, as with judicial rulings in the US, how a doctrine or policy is applied requires fine tuning to find the proper balance.

As I mentioned before, I tend to agree with the US philosophy of giving an extremely wide latitude to free speech. But I do understand the desire of other Western democracies to make minorities in their societies feel safe and accepted.
 
I’m very torn. On the one hand I really loath to see any form of public expression repressed, but on the other hand this was clearly a case trying to incite hatred (which is not protected in many western countries). Ultimately I think that unless such a gathering would prove bad for public order they should have allowed it to occur. The counter march could have screamed and shouted while the Catholics could have duly ignored them and got on with the business of loving and worshiping God.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top