What are your views on Multiculturalism in Ireland? - Threadbanned User List in OP

Hate speech is far too vague a term and far too easily swayed to the feelings of permanently offended, a particular court on the day, or a society of a given time. They're not far off blasphemy laws. They're also very much in the eye of the beholder.

There are any number of contributors to this thread who would be only too happy to have it closed and any discourse silenced and are not happy campers that it even exists. They see it as "hate speech". Even more so because their arguments have turned out to be remarkably lacklustre. When Accepted Truths are so easily poked it does suggest they're not so easily defensible and maybe aren't the truths their believers like to believe, so silence is the answer. Like the religious and blasphemy. As George Bernard Shaw once said: All great truths begin as blasphemies. A society that seeks to control speech in ever more nebulous ways is not on a good path. Censorship is always a slippery slope.

And the "Right On" love such laws but even here they may fall afoul of the same laws they clamour for. The same "Right On" usually have a bee in their bonnet about Israel and the Palestinians and are much more pro the latter. A few years back in France a couple of dozen pro Palestinian activists were arrested and fined 40k under the their hate speech laws for wearing tee shirts at a rally that had "Boycott Israel, long live Palestine" printed on them and handing out fliers that said buying Israeli goods was helping fund crimes against humanity. It was charged as being anti semitic and after appeals the highest court in the land upheld the sentences.

If someone says that male circumcision for non medical reasons is genital mutilation and should be outlawed. Is that anti semitic, anti Islam? I guarantee there would be some Jews and Muslims and others where this bronze age nonsense is in play would consider it "hate speech" and would seek to gag it through the courts.

In the US one side see BLM as hate speech towards the police and others, the other side see calling BLM hate speech as hate speech itself.

Of course the happy clappy naive think it'll stop all those tewwible wacists and the damn near non existent boogyman of the Irish "alt right" but are too happy clappy and naive to consider that when all the tewwible wacists and the half dozen alt right types are silenced the machine keeps trundling along looking for offence.

And Minister McEntee "considered" eh? I seriously doubt she's capable of much consideration at all, beyond empty posturing on social media. She got in on the back of the usual backward dynastic parish pump cute hoorism bollocks that has poisoned the Irish political landscape for far too long. Coveney another of the type. It was only resting in my ansbacher account yer honour.

So no, I do not consider it a "good thing" as I look at the wider issues that can come in its wake.

Nope. Not "triggered", it's called cogent debate on the topic with reasoning and examples. Though I could see how you might be confused by such and just keep peddling your happy clappy mantra in response. It's akin to watching the three chord and he's out guitarist in a folk mass group. "Kumbayah my lord" and so forth.

In any case being "triggered" is more the permanently offended's remit. And again you avoid points raised, either because you quite simply don't understand them, don't want to understand them because it questions your faith, or a little from column A and a little from column B.

Me. Earlier: And again you avoid points raised, either because you quite simply don't understand them, don't want to understand them because it questions your faith, or a little from column A and a little from column B. Yep, on the evidence so far seems pretty accurate alright.

It's like the unquestioning evangelical Christian who when asked about the wider theological points of their faith, doesn't understand the question so has no answer, or chooses to ignore the question because they have no answer and comes back with the dead eyed smile and Jesus is love! and talk of heresy.