Take a look at this video, of a sixteen-year old who videoed herself criticizing the Obama and general liberal stance on gay marriage. Innocuous, civil, standard-issue conservative commentary on the subject, really only distinguished by the commentator’s youth and her quoting Billy Graham. It went viral for some reason.
And You Tube banned it!!!
This must be a mistake, right? A rogue decision-maker, right?
They can implement what policies they want; the First Amendment only protects us against government abridgement of free speech. But they should remember that given enough actions like this, talk among conservatives of a boycott, and of an alternative video-sharing platform, will snowball.
UPDATE: Good news: Monday morning, You Tube decided the video wasn’t to be banned. Some details at the same link (Big Government)…no clarification on the decision process, though.
May 28th, 2012 | 1:12 am
So all the salacious material is OK, but a statement that is on a topic the president of the US has made a political issue of cannot be seen? Since when did YouTube decide to act like Big Brother? Millions of conservatives can move their products and their eyes to other venues, and should, if they are going to be discriminated against.
May 28th, 2012 | 1:19 am
Good! It’s time we call bigotry out for what it is and send a message that it is unacceptable in civil society. She can create her own website and post whatever garbage speech she wants on there. But YouTube is a private site and has every right to ban hate speech.
May 28th, 2012 | 1:26 am
She’s nothing but the Christian version of the Taliban. She wants to live by God’s word and she wants (to force) everyone else to do so as well! How arrogant and presumptuous of her! She is a religious fascist and her ideas don’t deserve consideration at this point in history. She should be summarily disregarded.
May 28th, 2012 | 7:29 am
Pro-gay propaganda is everywhere. It is an inundation through media that suggests homosexuals somehow do not have the civil rights of the rest of the population. How dare anyone say otherwise? This is the way the game is played these days. Disagreement is hate speech.
May 28th, 2012 | 12:20 pm
No.
May 28th, 2012 | 12:29 pm
When you can’t stand on the merits, fall back on the free speech argument. Classic. Gay people do NOT have the same civil rights everyone else does. People can still be fired for being gay in most states, and gay people cannot get married in any meaningful way (i.e., to someone to whom they would possible want to be married: someone of the same sex). Religious arguments by themselves with no foundation in logic or reason (i.e., God says so, period) have no place in a secular, pluralistic society. Neither do tautological arguments (I don’t believe gay people should be able to marry each other because I believe marriage is between a man and a woman).
By the way, YouTube is not the government, so the Big Brother comparison is particularly inapplicable.
May 28th, 2012 | 12:34 pm
By the way, I just searched for her on YouTube, and this video is still there, so apparently the memory hole is not working as well as it should.
May 28th, 2012 | 1:14 pm
Oh my, stop the hate speech! Stop criticizing these Victims!
Another example of ‘Leftist’ censorship was the hateful acts of the leadership at The Leauge of Ordinary Gentlemen, where I, a long time commentor and interlocutor of the confused and derailed, merely ‘commented’ that left wing women were stupid!
Well, that ‘comment’ got me ‘moderated’, which means the LoOG’s elite would be reading my remarks in order to filter out the ones’ they deemed inappropriate speech.
Of course, honor demanded that I withdraw and I have.
Because a similar event occurred over at Front Porch Republic, sometime earlier, I do think the Left, generally speaking, has become so sensitive re: their perverse ideologies that they can not tolerate any critique of their beliefs particularly the need to install a statist regime that will extirpate the final symbols of federalism.
May 28th, 2012 | 3:03 pm
John K’s comment above:
“[...] her ideas don’t deserve consideration at this point in history.”
I’ve never understood the “at-this-point-in-history” form of argument. Does this mean that, say, 50, 100 or 500 years ago, her ideas would have had merit, but today they are unmerited? I fail to understand how the simple passage of time, in itself, has much to say about the cogency, rationality, morality, etc. of her ideas. If they are wrong at this point in history, were they not also wrong in the past? If they were all right in the past, are they not also all right now?
Or, is the statement above built on an implied premise along the lines of “We all know that history is progressing inexorably toward ‘X,’ and she needs to fall in line with where history is (ostensibly) headed?”
John K, I hope this doesn’t come off as snarky. I would genuinely like to understand better where you’re coming from here.
May 28th, 2012 | 4:44 pm
@ Robert Cheeks: supposedly all comments here are moderated.
@John K: That is why my simple answer to the question: Did YouTube just ban Criticism of Gay Marriage? Was…No.
You went to Brietbart…there they specialize in “faux-outrage”/true believer right wing machiavellianism… “A Christian version of the Taliban?”…what side are you working for John K?
Also lets be clear, anyone who opens an account on YouTube can flag a comment or a video. If a comment or a video gets enough flags it undergoes a review process. YouTube and Google have some of the best IP lawyers in the U.S. They do not screw up and they do not tolerate fools.
“They can implement what policies they want”; (False, sorta) “The First Amendment only protects us against government abridgement of free speech.”(True, it requires state action).
As a member of YouTube you get to act as a “rogue” decision maker, by flaging disfavored content.
While Google is quite upfront about the policy, the actual mechanics of the review process are somewhat of a Trade Secret.
But Kate is not that wrong: “This is the way the game is played these days. Disagreement is hate speech.”
A game of monopoly for instance is mechanically played by rolling die and advancing a token according to the number of pips showing. Disagreement is colorably hate speech, because it is mechanically “hate speech”.
That is other members can flag your content and if enough do then democratic community standards are mechanically deemed to make it so (plus or minus other factors used in review and in protection of the YouTube trademark, and reputation.)
While some con’s/strategies are probably trade secret, some folks create multiple accounts and try to ban themselves.
YouTube even says: “Don’t try to look for loopholes or try to lawyer your way around the guidelines—just understand them and try to respect the spirit in which they were created.”
May 28th, 2012 | 5:04 pm
John K., who evidently places such a premium on logic, doesn’t appear to know the meaning of the word. His entire argument amounts to the most grotesque question begging, which is a logical fallacy. Some advice, don’t put words into other people’s mouths so as to misrepresent the argument, e.g., “I don’t believe gay people should be able to marry each other because I believe marriage is between a man and a woman.” The problem here is that the word “believe” is no part of the anti-homosexual-marriage argument. Marriage currently is defined as between one man and one woman, except in those states where it has been redefined. Until it is redefined, the statement “homosexuals cannot be married because marriage is between a man and a woman” is perfectly accurate and not a matter of belief. Your characterization of this as “tautological” shows that you haven’t the foggiest notion of what a “tautology” is. The second statement follows logically — got that? — logically from the definition. It is not a tautology, however, because the definition itself is rooted in experience, in history, culture, and above all in biology; the definition, like all sound definitions, is an inductive inference from experience; it is not a deduction. Tautologies apply only to deduction. Please familiarize yourselves with the tenets of elemental reasoning before mounting your soap box and hysterically flinging about big words whose meaning you fail to grasp.
On the other hand, to imagine, as you do, that the anti-homosexual-marriage position is a tautology is illogical in another sense because obviously what shall be the proper definition of marriage is precisely the point at issue, in which you blithely (and illogically assume) that marriage can simply be asserted to be otherwise than what it already is recognized to be and there’s an end on it. What remarkable pig-headedness. That’s called question begging or, continuing to fill in the gaps in your education, the fallacy of petitio principii. The burden of redefining a word of ancient usage surely rests with those who would redefine it, because we are talking about a concept and an institution that is bound up in customary law, not logic. You can not avoid the burden of getting people to agree with your redefinition. If you think that that task may be short-circuited with cheap insults like “bigotry” and “hate speech” then you are intellectualy slothful. It it is you who have no place in the argument, not the U-Tube girl.
Finally, there are numerous and weighty arguments contra homosexual marriage in which the words “God says so” make no appearance whatsoever, in which one need not come within a country mile of the word “religion.” Your evident ignorance of purely secular arguments such as those advanced by Prof. Robert George (and many others) is of a piece with your ignorance of logic. I suspect that your soap box is too high and the air too thin. Logical thinking is a challenge in such an environment. Yet you must try, as hard as it may be, to get this into your skull: the fact that you, JohnK., personally, do not agree with Prof. George or that you do not find his arguments persuasive does not mean that they don’t exist, which titanic falsehood is what you would have us believe.
May 28th, 2012 | 6:20 pm
RW, while my second post is pending in “moderation”, let me give you a good answer.
The “at this point in history” argument is actually a legal argument that is highly relevant to the actions of Google/Trademark but has escaped from the legal realm of trademark (USPTO) and entered into the popular culture.
It is an argument that makes sense mechanically in terms of answering what to do about intellectual property, i.e. “Trademarks” that were not offensive at the time, but are offensive now. i.e. what do you do with Chief Wahoo.
The law, i.e. the mechanics of political science, certainly protects Chief Wahoo and lets the Cleveland Indians use him, but the law of american exceptionalism i.e the common law is analogical, it proceeds by analogy. So some might say, look this squinty eyed Jap cartoon is no more offensive than Chief Wahoo…why can’t I get a trademark in it, to sell sushi?
So the USPTO using a mechanical process not unlike YouTube’s own (which was designed by Google IP attorneys) might say as a legal conclusion that “at this point in history” both Chief Wahoo and the squinty eyed Jap Cartoon (that someone tried to trademark in order to sell sushi) are offensive. But Chief Wahoo is grandfathered in, because the Cleveland Indians have invested considerable time and money in the brand, or because the lanham act does not fully apply.
The “at this point in history” argument is always a legal conclusion. If you are an administrative agency like the USPTO, you can obviously make this argument with more force.
Technically if it were not for “Occam’s razor” we could end all our sentences with “at this point in history” I think X. (that is also why we date things).
We can also go back and ammend complaints, so the “at this point in history” is actually a rather literal and mechanical form of argument.
If you bother to emphasize “at this point in history’ then you are saying that the other side really isn’t argueing in good faith, or in light of the facts… i.e. “at this point in history” you should ammend your complaint.
“Or, is the statement above built on an implied premise along the lines of “We all know that history is progressing inexorably toward ‘X,’ and she needs to fall in line with where history is (ostensibly) headed?”
Absolutely, only it can’t really just be an implied premise, it more or less has to have an actual legal framework, or perhaps some form of natural inevitability. Otherwise it is sort of a bluff, much like a meritless lawsuit.
In the context of “she is a religious fascist and her ideas don’t deserve consideration at this point in history”, there really isn’t enough substance to justify an “at this point in history” argument, all we can say is that John K, was mad or was pretending to be mad “at that point in history”. The innevitability was that he would cool off and realize that Breitbart was more or less a hoax.
May 28th, 2012 | 7:05 pm
John Lewis, yes, I know that PoMoCon ‘moderates’ all interlocutors. However, they inform you in the ‘comment’ column that ALL remarks are moderated and not just a select few. I don’t remember ever having PoMoCon either deleting a comment or blocking one.
May 28th, 2012 | 8:03 pm
“Front Porch Republic”? I knew they were censoring race realists simply because they didn’t think they belonged in that site. I didn’t realize they re censoring other any one else people.
May 28th, 2012 | 11:28 pm
The video wasn’t banned. Where did you come up with that bit of nonsense?
Just look on the MadeleineMcAulay user channel — it’s the top video, with something like 28,000 views now.
Gee whiz, I guess you must have been duped again by breitbart.tv. Big surprise! But why did it never occur to you to question the claim in the first place? After all, there are lots of anti-gay marriage videos on youtube, including many that are truly vile and filled with hate. There’s no reason youtube would ban this one. And they didn’t.
May 28th, 2012 | 11:53 pm
Correction to above:
“Front Porch Republic”? I knew they were censoring race realists simply because they didn’t think they belonged on the site. I didn’t realize they are censoring other any one else.
May 28th, 2012 | 11:54 pm
Also: one alternative to youtube:
http://www.niconico.com/
May 29th, 2012 | 4:45 pm
“Well, that ‘comment’ got me ‘moderated’, which means the LoOG’s elite would be reading my remarks in order to filter out the ones’ they deemed inappropriate speech.
Of course, honor demanded that I withdraw and I have.”
I assume I am banned there as well. Haven’t been by in a while.
I got fed up with Elias Isquith’s sanctimonious guises and poses.
The departure of the two of us cuts the number of counter-points in any argument there by two-thirds.
May 29th, 2012 | 4:48 pm
Anymouse, I think the effort at FPR, among some, is to gloss over many aspects of political discourse in favor of a rather agrarian-utopian dominated culture/society economically grounded on, say, a kumbaya version of Catholic distributism that, of course, requires the intercession and subsidization of the state. A regime utilizing a powerful central gov’t.
May 29th, 2012 | 7:37 pm
Among some that may be the intention. There seems to be a large liberal contingent on that site among the commenters. The writers are nevertheless fairly conservative.
May 29th, 2012 | 7:38 pm
In the Traditionalist sense of the word, of course.
December 27th, 2012 | 2:04 am
[...] Did You Tube Just Ban Criticism of Gay Marriage?First Things (blog)Take a look at this video, of a sixteen-year old who videoed herself criticizing the Obama and general liberal stance on gay marriage. Innocuous, civil, standard-issue conservative commentary on the subject, really only distinguished by the … [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact