Is it prohibited to mock the LGBT community in France? Recent question: Freedom of speech and blasphemy caused me to think about it and ask myself: is there any limits/prohibits for mocking in France? Is it legal to criticize the LGBT community? As we see, it is legal to mock religions, but what else?
Mockery is allowed; hate speech isn’t While freedom of speech is guaranteed under French law it does have limits. Since 2004, these limits have applied to gender and sexuality. Mockery is contemptuous or insulting speech; hate speech or vilification incites hatred, serious contempt or ridicule. The boundary between them must be established on a case-by-case basis including both content and context (“I’m going to get you” can be a serious threat but it can also be what a father says to his child when chasing them in the park) but in France, as in other liberal democracies, the benefit of the doubt goes to speech being considered lawful.
It is almost totally legal. Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status, and Ohio law (ORC 4112) does extends the prohibition to ancestry and military status. So if the reason is "she's (not) a soldier", it's illegal, otherwise it is legal.
In April 2017, a US District court on Colorado ruled that a law prohibiting women from exposing their breasts in public was an unconstitutional discrimination against women. The law was ordinance 134 passed by Fort Collins, Colorado in May 2016. The group opposing it was led by the activist organization "Free the Nipple." This ruling is not binding in other states, however. See this Snopes report for more details. The case is being appealed to the Tenth Circuit. A similar ordinance has been taken to state court in New Hampshire on similar grounds as described in this AP story and this US News story A similar claim in Illinois in 2017 resulted in a law against 'public indecency" being upheld (in Tagami v. City of Chicago) at the Federal Appeals Court level, according to this Reason story A similar law in Ocean City, Maryland, was challenged in federal court in the summer oif 2018 according to this news story. in 1991 in United States v. Biocic the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a similar law against a similar challenge. This Munknee article lists states where a woman going topless is legal and illegal. According to a Time Article (which gives a similar list): The vast majority of states actually have laws on the books making clear that women can’t be arrested under state law solely for being topless in settings where it’s OK for men. But many local ordinances ban the practice anyway. In short, it is not yet fully settled if there is a US constitutional right for a woman to go topless, and state and local laws vary widely. Local laws do not always conform to the laws of the state, but would probably require a court challenge to enforce the state law. Laws in other countries will vary, but many places ban such exposure.
This seems to be a mix of question about law and a meta-question about this site, but I'll treat it as an on-topic question about law. The author of a question, or answer, owns the copyright to their contributions, and they can re-publish to their heart's content. Any user who posts here grants a license to SE and other users to use content posted here, so I don't have to ask you permission to quote you. As part of the permission granted by SE to use this website, you have agreed to &quot;follow the rules&quot; set by SE. There are many rules, some spelled out more clearly that others. For example, if you post a question, you indirectly agreed that your content can be upvoted or down-voted. Certain content can be &quot;closed&quot; and deleted, when the content is deemed to violate the rules in particular ways (is spam, porn, abuse, or judged to be poor-quality). Judgment (on different matters) can be rendered by community managers, moderators, or other users. The agreement is here, see especially here. If we take the post that you linked to, it is quite possible that it was deleted because it is not a general legal question, in violation of the acceptable use policy. If you want a historical analysis of your particular case, it should be asked on Law Meta.
As a state university, the institution would be subject to First Amendment restrictions on their restrictions. They cannot prohibit expression of religious or irreligious viewpoints, they cannot prohibit expression of racist or anti-racist viewpoints, and so on. That said, there may be some murk pertaining to anti-discrimination legislation and the concept of a hostile environment. See for example this statement from U. Michigan: the underpinnings of any such restrictions are pretty broad (see the USC statement, including titles VI and VII of theCivil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and so on – those sorts of concerns apply to private schools as well). SWOSU has a long list of prohibited activities. The only rule that marginally looks like it could cover bad language is the ban on General misconduct that adversely affects the student's suitability as a member of the university community such as immorality, commission of major crimes, inciting disorders, association with known criminals, peace disturbances, disorderly conduct, and all acts that recklessly endanger the students or others. And that would be an incredible stretch. The residence handbook states, pertaining to the rooms, that Obscene material, including, but not limited to, pornographic literature, X-rated movies, and displays of profanity or language that is offensive to others may not be displayed. I assume that someone would be offended by the B word, so you can't display that on a poster in your room. This does not apply to verbal profanity or profanity in the lobby. Since they don't make the residency agreement publicly accessible, I can't see what they might have said there that implies a no-profanity rule. I should mention that university employees often over-interpret their authority, so it is not guaranteed that this is actual university policy (even is distributed by the front desk in a dorm). It may, however, be necessary to sue the university in order to get a clear indication that this is official policy, and that the policy is not a violation of the First Amendment. I would expect that the rationale has to do with "hostile environment". A second runner-up would be that it's about "disorderly conduct", which is where Florida A&amp;M places their anti-profanity rule.
No. I can't give a more detailed answer without reference to a specific statute. But just about every state anti-bullying statute in the U.S. restricts the definition to...well, bullying. There is a good summary of state bullying and cyberbullying statutes here. The laws are varied, but they invariable contain words like "harassment", "abuse", "threatening," "fear," and "hostile environment." Would it be possible to "cyberbully" someone on Stack Exchange under some of these statutes? Sure. You could do it in comments; in answers; even in questions. "Question: Is Bill in my algebra class a dork, or a tool?" Comment: "This is a terrible question, and I'm going to burn your house down. Downvoting." You could probably fit something like that under some of the broader statutes--although they still for the most part haven't been tested for First Amendment issues. But I don't know of any statute broad enough to include downvoting a question or answer, on a site people post on knowing that the whole purpose of posting is to allow their posts to be upvoted and downvoted. If there was such a statute--and again, I don't know of any--it would almost certainly be unconstitutional. There is no law against hurting people's feelings, at least in the United States, and a law that allows people to seek legal redress for someone saying "I disagree with you" is pretty much the poster child for a First Amendment violation.
Ducks are ducks, not people. It might surprise you, but even a hypothetical duck that could talk is a type of bird and is considered a waterfowl and wild game but not a person or human. As such, you can not commit any crime such as assault against it. In fact, provided that the lemonade stand owner has a hunting license and this is not in a zone where you can not hunt, such as inside a town, he could have shot the bird without repercussions - because a duck can be hunted. Threatening game birds is not covered by any law. Only would the lemonade stand owner have glued the bird to a tree he would have committed a crime, because gluing birds somewhere would be considered animal cruelty in most jurisdictions. As the duck is a bird and not a person, it can not commit any crimes, such as harassment. If a duck is a person... Assuming that there is such a place where duck is a slang term for a person, or where ducks are considered people, then the pattern is different: Such as duck would indeed perform a repeated action that is very much aimed at annoying the lemonade stand owner. But that is not necessarily legally harassment: In Germany, § 238 StGB is aimed at stalking and requires the aim of inciting fear, § 185 StGB is for insulting speech, including harassing speech, § 186 StGB is for defamation, and § 240 StGB for coercion through harassment. A charge under those would be tedious. In the United Kingdom, the English Protection from Harassment Act 1997, does not define harassment as any specific pattern. Scotland's variant reads a little simpler, and makes harassment for harassment's sake illegal. These laws might be applied to the duck. Many of the United States federal laws will simply not apply to the situation. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is about sexual harassment in the workplace, Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is for schools, and the Fair Housing Act does deal with home purchases and renting. All seem inapplicable. If the threat of gluing someone to a tree is a real threat under the law depends very much again. In Germany, it might be interpreted as too hilarious to be considered a true threat, but humiliating enough to constitute one of the insult laws, but the lyrics do not offer enough facts to make a proper analysis for this part.
The key limiting factors are the language: and the conduct has the purpose or effect of violating B’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B. And, also, the context of the term "belief" in the statute in conjunction with religion which is defined in the same section, which suggests that in this context it is intended to be understood as the kind of belief that constitutes a core worldview for a person, even if it is secular (e.g. Confucianism or a Stoic philosophy of life), rather than isolated particular ideas about factual things. There is also considerable room for judicial interpretation over whether, for example "effect of" is limited to an "effect" reasonably derived from the "conduct" in question. Still, in general, the U.K., has higher standards mandating civility in dealings with others than the U.S., and there is lots of conduct barred by the Equality Act of 2010 which would not be barred under U.S. law, for example. The closest analog in U.S. law is really the tort of "outrageous conduct" also sometimes known as "intentional infliction of emotional distress."