“Freedom” of expression
Oops! Our bad. When we wrote that stuff in our Universal Declaration of Human Rights about ‘Freedom of Expression’, we omitted a qualifying clause along the lines of ‘provided the content of your expression doesn’t offend anyone, particularly those whose ethical frameworks derive their ultimate authority from superstitious belief’.
You see, a theist’s right to be protected from the offensive opinions and actions of non-theists, outweighs the right of non-theists to be protected from the offensive opinions and actions of theists. Quite why this should be so no one is really sure, but regardless, someone should add this inviolable rule to the Declaration for it’s so often invoked that it could really do with some codification.
This is yet another poignant illustration of why the Declaration document should be a user-editable wiki rather than an inflexible, static HTML page. The latter is so Ethics 1.0.
Tags: freedom of expression, liberty, rights