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In the United States, freedom of speech, (and freedom of religion) are covered in the
Constitution of the United States, specifically in the Bill of Rights.
house.gov
house.gov
some additional sites for information:
senate.gov
senate.gov
The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Silicon Investor has "Terms of Use": techstocks.com , including,
"B. You agree not to use the service for illegal purposes or for the transmission
of material that is unlawful, harassing, libelous, invasive of another's privacy,
abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, tortious, improper or otherwise
objectionable, or that infringes or may infringe the intellectual property or other
rights of another.
Anyone na‹ve enough to believe that their First Amendment rights have been violated
due to having their membership revoked or having a post removed from SI needs to
peruse the above.
Beyond that, it appears there must be some sort of dividing line on SI between what is
".harassing, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar,
obscene, tortious, improper or otherwise objectionable." and what is not. Never was
this line more indistinct than in the case of religion and religious belief. For example, I
personally believe that calling someone of a different religious persuasion "evil" or
"blind" is not only abusive, it is harmful and threatening. Further, since I believe that
one's religion is an intensely personal matter, I believe that making public judgments
about another's religious persuasion could be invasive of their privacy. I believe that a
person's religion should never be the butt of vitriolic attacks.
Many people believe that "anything goes" on SI; I am not one of them. Some people
believe that if they are "right", they can say whatever they want, in whatever way they
want, because they "know they are right". In other words, some people believe that in
the case of religion, "the end justifies the means".
I don't agree with that philosophy. As a matter of fact, I find it offensive in the extreme.
I think our planet is littered with corpses that would agree with me if they could speak.
But, that's just my own opinion.
I find religious attacks on anyone to be offensive. So, I believe that if someone feels an
overwhelming need to discuss religion on SI, they would be viewed in a better light if
they were tolerant, if not respectful, of people who don't believe the same thing they
do, and restrict their discussion to posts that fully abide by the Terms of Use and
appear only on selected threads that have been created specifically for religious
discussion. I think it's "off topic" anywhere else. |
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