Posted on 09/27/2013 7:56:14 PM PDT by don-o
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's government banned a weekend gay pride march for the third consecutive year on Friday, citing the threat of violence from right-wing hooligans, in a move that sparked protests by gay activists and criticism from the European Union.
Denying that the government had given in to right-wing threats, Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said on state television that the ban on Saturday's event was a public safety matter. The last gay pride march in 2010 triggered a day of rioting and arson by nationalists in the capital Belgrade.
"After a long discussion on whether the march would pass without severe consequences, the security assessments indicated severe threats to public safety," Dacic said after a three-hour meeting with security chiefs.
snip
Western ambassadors had pressured Serbia to allow this year's event to go ahead, as a litmus test of the Balkan country's commitment to tolerance and diversity.
The United States embassy issued a statement saying it was "very disappointed" by the ban and EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule said it marked "a missed opportunity to show respect for fundamental human rights."
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
good
So it seems like the US and Western Europe nations and Canada are pretty much the sole countries on earth where homosexual agenda activists feel empowered enough to coerce the public into approving of them, doesn’t it? Nowehre else do you find this, not in Latin America, not in Central or Eastern Europe, not in Africa, Russia, India, China, South East Asia, the Middle East, nowhere.
Good for them! These degenerates need to learn their sick perversion is not normal, nor will it ever be normal!
I will never consider the behavior of sodomy normal!
And for the record, I do believe in freedom of speech for everyone and for any kind of cause you can think of. But this shows that anytime Western civilization shows kindness and tolerance for a special interest group, it is often all for nothing, taken completely for granted and treat as something the special interest group is entitled to. I don’t doubt that tons of Americans are getting truly fed up with it and just don’t feel comfortable saying it aloud.
I believed that as well along with all kinds of stupid stuff - when I was 16.
The mainstreaming of sexual perversion does not contribute to the general welfare of society.
I see you are new here. Tread lightly.
I so agree with you.
I am so depressed about what is happening to America right now. The Militant Homo Agenda is taking over Calif. and it is sickening. I realize God hates the sin and not the sinner but what is happening here is bs. and I hate it.
I just meant that in my personal view, speech like this should first and foremost be countered with good speech. I am not for mainstreaming of sexual perversion at all, I believe that positive speech, rather than banning speech, is by and large the best way to counter these things. When gay activists start parades in the US, I would advocate first and foremost to fight them by countering with demonstrations and marches of our own. And making sure we fight for our own right to have demonstrations and marches to counter them.
One thing I will agree with you 100 % on is that they should never under any circumstances be allowed to target children.
I have seen the debates on whether or not Lady gaga, for example, should be allowed to say what she says under freedom of speech. And I noticed that then also, on FR people are rather divided between those who say she should and those who say she should not. I would say, in that example, that Lady gaga should be legally allowed to say what she says, because conservative Christians should be able to organize and get involved on grassroots levels and fight her negative influences on their own by taking the initiative themselves. And I definitely say that as someone who does not, at all, in any way, endorse or condone what she says about morality.
Having said all that, I will also say that I will not be losing even a second of sleep over the Serbians’ decision to ban the parades and I am perfectly fine with their decision to do so and would never try and tell them how to run their own nation.
[don-o:] I believed that as well along with all kinds of stupid stuff - when I was 16. The mainstreaming of sexual perversion does not contribute to the general welfare of society.
[Me:] If we don't have freedom of speech we don't agree with, we don't have freedom of speech.
You don't need a First Amendment to protect speech you wouldn't ban anyway. But if you want to ban speech that you think "does not contribute to the general welfare of society," you have no basis to complain if a majority of the legislature decides that Christianity and conservatism "don't contribute to the general welfare of society."
[don-o:] I see you are new here. Tread lightly.
[me:] Who died and left you guardian of the newbies?
[sarcasm] Absolutely, we want people to "tread lightly" on FR if they dare post such heretical thoughts as freedom of speech. We wouldn't want that in a "Free Republic," now would we? [/sarcasm]
That explains fairly well what I was saying. Look, again I say I am shedding zero tears over Serbians’ decision to do this. But when it comes to the US, I fear about dangerous precedents that banning speech for any reason sets.
As it is, we have fellow conservative, American patriots who are stuck in statist sinkholes like Maryland, New York, Mass and California, places where any day the state gov’ts could decide that conservative, Christian values don’t contribute to their society and so they are gonna ban them. And we know full well we cannot in any way, shape or form count on our federal gov’t to have the morality and the backbone needed to do the right things if these state gov’ts tried that. That is why I feel the precedents should be to fight bad, amoral speech with conservative Christian speech. And to be honest, I think conservative Christians could stand to do that a lot more than they currently do.
Why does the US issue these kind of stupid statements?
A few years ago I was reading FR and some poster declared, with great drama, that he would defend the "rights" of satanists to build temples and worship as they please, with his dying breath. And that this made him a true American and a true patriot and moreover a true Christian (of some libertarian sort). This guy wasn't 16 though, he was an adult.
It appears that freedom of speech is like a live grenade in hands of a monkey. It can be easily abused - and it is abused daily. It will work as intended only in an enlightened society, like within a group of scientists. Unfortunately, such societies don't exist on large scale on this Earth - and they can't appear, per our laws and our morals. Therefore, a genius and an idiot have equal rights to free speech. We know well how that works; just look at the results of recent elections. Universal suffrage sounds good on paper, but it produces horrible results in practice.
In your view then, the Serbians did the wrong thing. And you would not want homo rallies banned in America.
Well now you know how it came to pass that homos run America and not Serbia.
But it seems like having someone else arbitrarily determine what is allowed speech is just as dangerous.
And given that expressing ideas can be dangerous, what is the alternative? How do we decide who gets to vote and who gets freedom of speech? With voting, there are some very practical solutions, for example, no voting rights for welfare recipients ( though even getting that passed would be very difficult ) and with speech, we can draw the line at speech that poses an immediate danger to someone’s safety. But beyond that, where do we go?
Who do you think should have the right to vote? And do you think free speech in America should be given to activists like Lady gaga and to gay activist parades, provided these parades do not ever target children (which of course would be immediate grounds for banning them and arresting anyone who participates).
Zero, the Serbs don’t like homos. Get over it.
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