Score this one as follows:
Outrage! - 1
Reggae & Freedom - 0
Apparently the musical lyrics of Bounty Killer, Elephant Man, TOK, Capleton, Beenie Man, Sizzla Kalonji, Buju Banton and Vybz Kartel are unacceptable and intolerant.
When the story first broke in 2003, I don’t recall a thread about it…here’s an update:
According to The Guardian, a measure that called for Virgin Megastore, HMV and MVC in Brighton not to stock music by certain reggae artists who have been accused of glorifying the killing of gay people passed.
How binding that measure is remains to be seen - How graphic the lyrics of the artists in question are is moot (IMO). You wanna complain about their works, fine. Expose it for what it is and move on. Still pissed? Release an album that calls for the bashing of homophobic reggae artists if you wish - but don’t head down that ‘ban it’ route, you won’t like what you find.
I don’t see anything about “freedom” in the lyrics you posted.
I’m a fan of the Canadian laws that explicitly state that incitements to violence and hate speech are not protected as free speech. AFAIK, those laws have not caused any problems here. I don’t see why similar actions would anywhere else.
Hmm. According to gaydar.com radio’s interview with members of Brighton’s governing council, the council is well aware that contrary to the Guardian’s and your spurious claim they do not have the power to “ban” the music from the town. What they have done, as your own link states clearly and unambiguously, is pass a resolution “urging” various large record chains which operate in the town from stocking music which contains lyrics which glorify the violent deaths of gay people. “Urging” is not “banning.”
What exactly is your problem with a unit of government taking a stand against music that glorifies the murder of gay people? Anyone who wants to listen to such music within the Brighton city limits is still free to do so. Anyone wishing to sell such music is free to do so.
Oh and coincidentally the story is playing on gaydarradio.com right now and yes, the Council clearly understands that it lacks the power to ban the music from being sold.
As for Outrage!, I can’t see a problem with informing people of the pro-violence stand of this handful of performers. I like reggae music and appreciate knowing that there are reggae performers who espouse my death, so I know not to support them with my money by buying their songs or attending their concerts. This is the marketplace at work. Beanie Man and Elephant Man and Sizzla and the rest of the bigots are free to seek out venues for their hate music and Outrage! is free to encourage people not to support them financially or give them a venue. Ain’t free enterprise grand?
Ask Howard Stern, the producers of “Married…With Children” or CBS how free speech is in the United States. I haven’t heard that Brighton or any other unit of government in Britain (or anywhere else for that matter) has fined any of these performers or taken any other legal action aganst them.
This isn’t a ban on music. Brighton Council doesn’t have that power.
Inciting others to commit murder is not a protected form of speech.
This is not an abstract concept of inciting hatred–even in recent years, gay people in Jamaica have been hacked apart by homophobic mobs.
This is one reason I’m happier in the UK, where incitement to burn gay men and women can cause a major outrage and where the government takes action (in the case of denying visas) to those who advocate our murder.
(I’m also happier to live in a place where civil unions will soon be available to gay couples–rather than a place where the executive branch seeks to deny legal rights to sexual minorities. So much for your vaunted freedom.)
Sometimes I SWEAR editors write their headlines without actually reading the damn stories.
I’m sad that my first response to this comment was “heh.” In recent years the FCC has gone crazy and the public seems to be getting increasingly prudish and oversensitive, and the media seem happy to censor themselves. I don’t know if the same people who get outraged about Janet Jackson’s breast and Ice-T would complain quite as loudly about this message. Anyway:
That’s basically true in America as well, and it has been for 30 years even though schools still talk about “clear and present danger.” The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio that speech is not protected when its intention is to create “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” The quoted lyrics wouldn’t qualify, though.
Anybody else really wish Bob Marley was still around when they read about these disgusting trends in reggae?
That’s a huge conclusion to draw from the actions of one city council. Sort of drawing such a conclusion about a state wherein a school board tried to ban the Diary of Anne Frank for its “sexual” content.
Yes, is it is. Murdering someone is illegal, talking about it is not as far as I’m aware of.
If there’s to be freedom of speech at all it unfortunely includes opinions you, I and any sane person find abhorrent.
The best way to combat eejits like these third rate artist is to make tons of sizzling reggae with pro-gay or unrelated lyrics. At the same time we (also enjoying free speech) can argue against them.
By the way, I had never heard of half of these “musicians” before all this controversy, suggesting they may get more airplay and fame out of all this.
Actually, we have in Britain laws that make it a criminal act to encite others to do violence against others. Particularly when “others”=minority groups. So, talking about murdering gays the way these artists are, is actually illegal under UK law.
Why? What if the particular group that hatred was being inticed against was one that you belonged to? And you lived in fear of your life. Would you still be as adamant then?
They cancelled Beenie Man’s show in Indy because of the protests and the content of his show. Evidently the venue was unaware of this when they booked him.
I don’t consider that censorship, that’s just a business deciding whether or not to sell a product. Most people ain’t buying what those assholes are selling.
Disclaimer: I see nothing all that hateful in the lyrics posted. And though I detest their general message, the artist’s rights to free speech trump the offended parties right to hands down.
That being said, for those who support this hypocritical (non-binding) ‘ban’ passed by over-zealous city councilpersons on the grounds of ‘incitement’, where do you stand on the banning of:
Rage Against The Machine?
Body Count / Ice T?
Eminem?
…Are they not inciteful? Why draw the line at a few reggae acts? Do you really want to go down that road?
Brighton is probably the gayest town in Britain. It has a very large gay resident population and is a mecca for gay londoners (and other gays) for the weekend. Indeed it even has an area (Kemp town) that is known locally as “Camp town”, so anti-gay stuff goes down rather badly in Brighton.
Secondly no one is trying to ban anything. They are saying that all-in-all the people of Brighton should, where possible, try to avoid buying “music” that advocates the beating and murder of their neighbours.
Having said that if we ignored cheese-whistles like beenie man he’d probably go away. Most of the gays I know aren’t as vexxed about this as Peter Tatchell is (but then who is?)
Also a couple of men have recently been killed in (apparent) anti-gay attacks.
How the hell do you not see an incitement to kill gay men for being gay as not hateful?
Pookah, there’s a difference between talking about murder and encouraging people to commit it. While I’m generally very strongly pro-free speech, this is a restriction that I think I can live with.
I didn’t get Rage’s last album or two, but offhand I don’t recall any lyrics calling for people to be killed. Ice-T got in far more shit than these artists; compared to that the request by the Brightons is pretty mild. Eminem only talks about killing his ex-wife, and it’s understood that he tries to be outrageous and/or funny. Show me a reason to think the artists quoted in the OP are kidding.
And no, none of them qualify as incitement by America’s standards.
I admit that’s a position that’s hard for me to imagine and I might well talk differently if that was the case.
However, the way I see it is that it is already the case there are people who have these nasty ignorant opinions on other groups of people. If there was no homophobia, there would be no people to buy these awful recordings so no record company would touch the dimwits making the music.
So if you take it as a given that these opinions already exist, making it illegal for them to voice them is not making them go away. What you end up with is an ignorant homophobe/racist/whatever for whom it is now illegal (we are talking about illegal hate speech now. I accept that the music wasn’t “banned” in Brighton) to speak their minds on the matter. To me that doesn’t really change anything. It’s perhaps better to let these people vent their opinions so that we then can at least try to reason with them.
Plus it doesn’t leave the door open for the government to curtail freedom of expression in other ways.