In 1993, when Jonathan Rauch's landmark book
Kindly Inquisitors was first published, the idea that minorities need special protection from discriminatory or demeaning speech was innovative. Today, it's standard operating procedure--routinely enforced by universities, employers, foreign governments, and even international treaties. In a newly expanded electronic edition of his book, Rauch, an openly gay advocate of same-sex marriage and of gay equality generally, argues that suppressing hateful speech does minorities more harm than good, and that the gay civil rights movement of the past two decades dramatically illustrates the point. Join us as the author explains why gays and other minorities are better off if government protects bigoted speech than if government protects them from it.
