When Mel Gibson went on his drunken anti-Jewish tirade that night, he might have been offensive to some people, but he wasn't doing anything illegal.
Any consequences he suffered -- becoming a bit of a social pariah, losing work -- were purely because people chose to not associate with him because they found him offensive.
It would be like if nobody wanted to hire me here because I told lots of off-color jokes about Muslims and Arabs.
Freedom of speech laws in the US involve many issues like libel (spoken), slander (written), malice (intent to cause harm), whether the person expressed something as a fact or his opinion (the latter is okay).
You certainly can't use hate speech to incite violence (tell someone to go out and shoot all the gays, or riot in front of synagogue), and employers can be held accountable if their workplace allows a pattern of harrassment to exist (so you can't tell the chick in the cubicle next to you that she has a nice rack and expect nothing to happen).
But if some random person calls you a whore/nigger/faggot/kike/towelhead/wetback other offensive word, that's pretty much considered protected speech in the USA.
You don't like it, walk away.
"If you're looking for sympathy, you'll find it between sh*t and syphilis in the dictionary."
- David Sedaris
When Mel Gibson went on his drunken anti-Jewish tirade that night, he might have been offensive to some people, but he wasn't doing anything illegal.
Any consequences he suffered -- becoming a bit of a social pariah, losing work -- were purely because people chose to not associate with him because they found him offensive.
It would be like if nobody wanted to hire me here because I told lots of off-color jokes about Muslims and Arabs.
Freedom of speech laws in the US involve many issues like libel (spoken), slander (written), malice (intent to cause harm), whether the person expressed something as a fact or his opinion (the latter is okay).
You certainly can't use hate speech to incite violence (tell someone to go out and shoot all the gays, or riot in front of synagogue), and employers can be held accountable if their workplace allows a pattern of harrassment to exist (so you can't tell the chick in the cubicle next to you that she has a nice rack and expect nothing to happen).
But if some random person calls you a whore/nigger/faggot/kike/towelhead/wetback other offensive word, that's pretty much considered protected speech in the USA.
You don't like it, walk away.
"If you're looking for sympathy, you'll find it between sh*t and syphilis in the dictionary."
- David Sedaris