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Proposed Law Makes Calling Someone a ‘Bitch’ Illegal, Punishable by Up To 6 Months in Jail

24-10-2019 < SGT Report 18 613 words
 

by Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project:


Bitch: noun – 1 a female dog: 2 a female of canines generally.


Massachusetts — Just when you think that the already-villainous bureaucracy couldn’t get any worse, lawmakers in Massachusetts step in to set the record straight by proposing legislation that will outlaw saying the word bitch in certain contexts. Seriously.


State Rep. Daniel Hunt (D–Boston) thinks that the citizens of Massachusetts — whose state motto is “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty” — should not be allowed to say the word bitch when attempting “to accost, annoy, degrade or demean” another person. The legislation, H. 3719, quite literally makes it a crime to call someone a bitch and mean it. According to the bill:




A person who uses the word “bitch” directed at another person to accost, annoy, degrade or demean the other person shall be considered to be a disorderly person in violation of this section, and shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsections (a) and (b). A violation of this subsection may be reported by the person to whom the offensive language was directed at or by any witness to such incident.



What, exactly, are the penalties for calling someone a bitch, you ask? Well, for a first time offender, saying bitch could net you a $200 fine or up to six months in a cage. That’s right.


According to the bill, anyone who is called a bitch can report this to the police or, anyone who has witnessed another person call someone else a bitch, can also report this to the police.


Imagine what the state of law enforcement would look like in Massachusetts if people started calling 911 to report being called a bitch. Cops would have to pry themselves away from disproportionately arresting black people for weed to investigate someone being “annoyed” by a bitch-caller.


As Boston.com reports, the Massachusetts Republican Party criticized and mocked the bill Monday, writing on Twitter, “Beacon Hill Democrats like (Rep. Dan Hunt) are fearlessly taking on the biggest problems facing the commonwealth.”


The bill was introduced in May and has already moved through the house and senate. A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday but the results of that hearing are not yet available.




Naturally, such a tyrannical and First Amendment-shattering law has constitutionalists up in arms.


“There’s a certain category of legislation that’s patently unconstitutional. This is among them,” Cambridge civil-rights attorney Harvey Silverglate said. “This is just the latest futile effort by the word police to control what other people say and indirectly control what they think.”


“As the Supreme Court has said there’s no happy talk requirement in the First Amendment. You cannot ban a word when it’s used to annoy someone but let them use the word when they are using the word in a positive way,” Jim Manley, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm that litigates free speech issues, tells Reason. “There’s no confusion about this point of law.”


“Legislatures,” he says, “can’t just pluck words out of the dictionary and ban them.”


Read More @ TheFreeThoughtProject.com





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