You have the right to hate whomever you want and express that hatred, that's part of being free. Surpress that kind of thing and it will just make problems worse. I think a lot of left wingers don't "get" that. The last thing we need is for "Fag" to become the same as the "N" word on general principle.
I think the NBA is way out of line for this, and if there is some way to sue them for even making this attempt, it should probably happen. You might not LIKE what happened here, but freedom of speech is far more important than the moral comfort zone of left wingers. Freedom of speech is *NOT* just the freedom of people to say things you like or agree with. This is one of the reasons why I have such a hard time saying that I think things that I don't care for should be banned even when they are far more disruptive than this. Good examples of this would be the whole "playable Taliban" fiasco, even after they were renamed, and the upcoming "Juarez" game with it's real life gang propaganda, and of course that lovely "Alien Jihad" game. Despite "only" being video games, I think all of those things are a *FAR* bigger deal than some trash talking.
I'll also go so far as to say that if you want to get technical, the term "Homophobe" and similar should also be banned if your going to ban the term "******" for all intents and purposes. After all the term implies you have an irrational fear of gay people simply because they are differant, and carries a negative connotation for the person who would believe such a thing, just as calling someone a Fag implies like they other guys and has a negative connotation attached to it. The sole differance of course being that one term is used by left wingers as a political tool for their agenda, and the other term is employed by people who simply don't like gays (specifically gay men, there are other terms for Lesbians on the occasions when it comes up).
Once you start saying free speech is limited and certain things are not protected, then you lose free speech. The whole point is to prevent one paticular belief structure, whether oppressive or "benevolent" from being able to control what anyone else says or thinks.
Now, where free speech would not be protected is if Kobe had hopped up on a Soap Box and started encouraging active violence and criminal activitiy on the spot. If he was trying to organize a lynch mob, then there would be an issue.
The gray area actually involved here is not that what he said isn't protected, he can't be arrested for it, or fined by the goverment. It's that this protection doesn't apply to private organizations, businesses, and property. Effectively giving groups like the NBA power in excess of the goverment here, which I don't think was intended since groups like this were never considered. Just as the control of speech on "private" websites, or private groups entirely controlling the mass media (and the role it would play) were also not considered. This becomes a huge issue above and beyond so called "hate speech", which I won't get into, since that control can be used for a lot of things.
Overall, in this paticular case I do *NOT* think the NBA should be able to engage in activity like this, nor should the owner of the stadium where the game was played given that it's open to the public. This however becomes a far more complex arguement since what was actually said in THIS case is irrelevent.
Right now I think the snowball effect of well intentioned left wingers in banning "hate speech" one way or another is one of the greatest threats we're currently facing. It's a differant kind of threat from some facist regime trying to quash criticism, but winds up going to the same place.
My opinion on gays aside (I'm anti-gay men), to put things into a context I'd support, let's say we DID go out and ban this upcoming "Call Of Juarez" game, which I'd argue by spreading gang propaganda is similar to rallying a "lynch mob". The differance between this and other gang games (and an important one) is that it uses the real world, as opposed to an over-the top setting full of fictional criminals Once you ban that though, it opens the door for people to sit down and try and ban anything they feel is disruptive to society. Pick the right issues and someone can be seen as some kind of bigot for saying that something isn't as bad as say the gang violence issue or whatever. Then that ruling is used to springboard onto others, and next thing you know we can't have games that are offensive to anyone, all beacause we didn't want to glorify ongoing border drug wars and the criminals involved. There are other threats on free speech that come from other directions, but this is a big one.
While I've occasionally had to reconsider my position, I tend to wind up coming back to the same place. Right now the *only* exception to free speech should be in times of national emergency/crisis (ie wars, super-large scale disasters, etc...) and of course in matters of national security. Basically, I'm against things like what "Wikileaks" did, which was to leak classified diplomatic observations/documents and such, which can undermine entire societies and even the global community. I understand their principles (even if I don't care for the agenda they seem to support) but things like national security represent the sole exception to free speech and free information. What they leaked doesn't even count as some kind of bizzare violation of that goverment "Privlege" either. You might not like their conclusions, but when we send diplomatic analysts to tell the goverment what they think, it's not always going to be politically correct, and that's the point. What's more this kind of thing IS an intentional rat fight, and by leaking info on one side your doing damage to them. I actually think Wikileaks was treated with relative kid gloves under the circumstances to be honest.
