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from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:17PM (1 child)
You missed a couple of points. Gay women may be much cleaner than everyone else now, but he was talking about evolutionary selection not the current situation.
The other thing is the historical difference in reaction to male (1) and female (2) gays combined with your assertion, actually supports his view.
1 kill it with fire
2 Meh, lets watch and then rape
They are both nasty, but from an evolutionary perspective they are very different.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:59PM
Careful with that evo-psych crack pipe there...too many people point to some half-assed evo-psych idea as justification for poor behavior. We are intelligent animals, and the purpose of that intelligence is to tell Mother Nature and her abusive pimp Malthus where to go, what to do when they get there, with whom, and for how long. Evolution is an explanation, not an excuse, and we're more than the sum of our genes.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...