I had to read the Scarlet Letter in high school. Hester Prynn had to live with the outcome of saying whatever it was. It was literally puritanical to make her wear a red “A.” as the outcome of her speech (v-a-v extramarital sex).

I think the point isn’t that speech should have no impact, but that the response to speech should be proportional and what proportional means. The Puritans in Hawthorne’s novel thought that making someone a pariah was a proportional response. They were wrong, I think.

But the lesson, I think, is not that we should be more precise in meting out moral judgement, but that we should judge less.