>Think of it this way. If you're a gay person, and the people around you say that men having sex with men is "abominable," does that make you more or less likel

>Think of it this way. If you're a gay person, and the people around you say that men having sex with men is "abominable," does that make you more or less likely to freely express your sexuality? >This IS violence and it's a way of silencing gay people. Dehumanization is violence. This type of speech is why gay people are marginalized and why they feel the need to keep their sexuality a secret. There's a long history in many places of criminalising and discriminating against those who are gay. That's wrong. And it's understandable that folks whose liberties have been infringed by such laws and cultural repression would treat their orientation as a political issue and push their elected representatives to support their liberty. And that's generally a good thing. But legislators have one primary tool -- legislating. Which is why we get laws that criminalise one thing or another, whether that may be appropriate or not. At the same time, there's an old saw: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. And that's, for the most part (patterns of harassment are a small subset of unpleasant speech and are already criminalised in many places), the truth. I am a practitioner of BDSM. Which is often demonised as "abuse." It isn't, of course, as everything I do with a partner is consensual. I generally don't publicly discuss my sex life, because it's private. But if I did (as I am now), and you were to say that I'm a "rapist" or an "abuser" or a "criminal" because of my practices, you'd be wrong. But saying such things isn't "violence." Rather it's just ignorant, unpleasant and busybody[0] behavior. If we accept your argument, then we'd need to ban any speech that anyone finds objectionable, uncomfortable or unpleasant/nasty. And if we were to do that, I imagine you'd find yourself sharing a jail cell with the pastor you're deriding for his "violence." Is that the sort of world in which you want to live? For me, the answer is an emphatic "no." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busybody https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busybody Edit: Fixed typo. Added the missing link.