> This isn't the greatest part of white supremacy or homophobia but it does exist and to claim it doesn't is either ignorance or (now that you don't have that excuse) willful complicity.

Wait, back up. Who said they don't exist? Your claim was that letting people be bigoted makes it worse, not that it creates the problem in the first place.

You said they don't exist:

>>Where are the violent neo-Nazis? I don't see it.

No, I said I don't see it. I asked you to show me. You still haven't made the connection between the links you offered and free speech.

I definitely deal with less homophobia now than I did five or ten years ago, and most of it came from engaging with homophobes and changing their minds. Racism is still almost as bad as ever, but it seems like that's mostly because the instigators (racists) never interact with their targets (people visually and culturally dissimilar from them).

The only difference I see is that one improved more than the other because people engaged with bigots and changed their minds. Which goes against your (as of yet unproven) assertion that engagement makes it worse.

> And in America, dressed as police, shooting any black man they care to.

False equivalence is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

This country is pretty bad about race. It's a struggle getting the average person to even acknowledge that racism is still a thing. But I don't agree with tedks that banning racism (or other bigotries) is going to solve anything. People are still going to be bigots. They'll just hide it better.

Making them hide their bigotry will seem like a solution in the short term, but it never ends well. And on a personal level, I would rather the bigots be open about it so I can avoid them. As long as they're not voting away my rights or being violent, the psychological harm is manageable.