Response to Lake

Bea:

In your recent Wespeak you make it quite clear that, in your opinion, Evan Carp’s heinous, offensive Wespeak should not have been published. Would you rather that he continue to carry those opinions around without having to face the (let me count) fourteen Wespeaks condemning his bigoted views? Here, let me add my voice to the fray: Carp, you’re an idiot. And a bigot, at that, who has decided that simplifying an issue to the point where you can grapple with it is worth the human cost of bigotry and religious prejudice.

So that’s fifteen now.

But Bea, what do you hope to gain from censorship of opinions that you find offensive? The author will still believe the offensive thoughts, and ze won’t be met with a strong condemnation on the part of the rest of the society to which hir wrote. The debate will be removed from the public realm where the offensive thoughts, unchecked, will be far more insidious. Censorship is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind solution that fails to fix anything.