France ramps up ‘hate speech’ laws for ‘transphobia’ offenders
by Jeanne Smits, LifeSite:
Never say anything slanderous, insulting or that promotes discrimination against homosexuals or transsexuals in France, even in private. And remember that discrimination and hate speech have a much broader meaning than you might think: Under modern anti-defamation laws, their scope extends to merely a negative statement or even just saying certain lifestyles are morally reprehensible.
In a government issued decree at the beginning of August, when the vast majority of French people are having their vacation or otherwise trying to cope with midsummer lethargy, a new target for “hate speech” has been identified. Heavy penalties and other repressive measures have been set up for committing verbal “abuse” or differentiated treatment related to “gender identity” – even in private.
Since 1972 when the first anti-discrimination law came into force in France, race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and, more recently, handicaps and “sexual orientation” were part of the protected categories that fell both under the public and private hate speech laws. Public offenses are those committed in the press or in the audiovisual media and those that are most often prosecuted and sanctioned. The new decree scraps the word race and replaces it with “presumed race” in order to make clear that in the spirit of the French government the concept of race is a guilty fabrication. And for the first time “gender identity” has been added in order to fight “transphobia.”
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