Freedom of Speech

 Do you believe in Christ?

 Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual

or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of
retaliation, censorship, or sanction.

 Article 19 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1949

Everyone has got the right of liberty of opinion and expression.

This right includes freedom to hold and express opinions without

interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through
any media and regardless of frontiers.

 The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the government system of

the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat public heresy committed by
baptized Christians. Everyone accused of misbeliever was sentenced to
death. It started in 12th-century France to combat religious dissent. Witch
hunts and trials. Drowned them.

 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted during the
French Revolution in 1789, specifically affirmed freedom of speech as an
inalienable right. Article 11: The free communication of ideas and opinions
is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may,
accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible
for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

 In more recent history, in the western world, women were not allowed to
vote until the beginnings of the XIX century. Gender-based censorship
“Women writers are a threat to systems built on gender hierarchy because
they open doors for other women.

 1955: First school for girls, 1970: First university for women
2017: right to obtain driver's licenses without permission from their legal
guardians. n Saudi Arabia, every woman must have a male guardian — her
father, brother, husband, uncle or even son — who has to give his approval
before the woman can travel outside the country, get married or divorced
and be released from prison. This does not change if her guardian is abusive.
 The players involved with the #TakeAKnee movement, who are mostly
Black, are protesting police killings of Black men and women. They've put
their livelihoods on the line for doing so – Colin Kaepernick, who was once
a star quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, now can't find a team to hire
him. For Trump and the mainly white and wealthy NFL owners who oppose
#TakeAKnee, kneeling during the national anthem shows disrespect.

 Freedom of speech only applies to government enforcement. That means

that if someone is in a coffee shop and decides to start talking at peak
volume about how the government’s new immigration policies are wrong;
the management is perfectly within its rights to tell that person to get out.
Other patrons can ignore the speaker, or even jeer derisively. There’s no
such thing as the guarantee that anyone will care what you have to say, or
freedom from being made fun of.

 Sartre: Your rights end when the rights of others begin.

 “Hate Speech” which might incite violence against certain groups of

people. The key thing is that you can’t turn your words into weapons. Once
you do that you’ve stopped expressing your right to free speech and started
infringing on the rights of others.

 Why is it important? Freedom of speech can be the key to all other rights.
Free Speech can let you speak out about any kind of abuse, for example.
And imagine you lost the right that lets you express yourself, how you are.
That would prive you developing in many aspects.