Do We Have A Moral Obligation To Defend Free Speech

Paul Russell: Keep your homophobic and racist comments to yourself Posted: May 16, 2009, 12:30 PM by Paul Russell

The Letters page of the National Post gives readers a forum to vent their frustrations about the news of the day — but sometimes this criticism gets out of hand and becomes racist, homophobic or otherwise hateful in nature. Examples of all of these characteristics have been plentiful.

-- We carried numerous letters this week about Miss California and her views on gay marriage. It was a lively debate, with some correspondents agreeing with Carrie Prejean that marriage should be between a man and a woman; others argued that such a restriction is a violation of a gay person’s rights. But a handful of pro-Prejean letters were rejected out of hand.

Here are a few choice excerpts from those letters. “Homosexuality, per se, is a burden of sin upon those so afflicted,” one writer decreed. Another one urged gays to “abstain from sexual immorality.” A third called homosexuality a “despicable lifestyle choice … that in the end [people] will be judged for.”

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