I find it awfully ironic how those who bend over backwards for "tolerance" are the ones who support a homogeny of thought and defend it via censorship and intolerance of the intolerant. I am a college student (in the U.S.) and watch this unfold daily at my campus. If it is a religious or cultural intolerance then the overly active cultural relativists love to justify and apologize; if, on the other hand, it happens to be a middle class white racist or bigot, then the school–and the "tolerant" students within–will do backbreaking gymnastics to censor them. I believe we should hear these ideas–however petty, crude, ignorant and inflamattory–and let each individual ridicule them personally. Homogenizing thought will never be the answer and restricting speech in one case will inevitably lead to more restrictions, eventually to people we need to hear. Free speech for all, but especially for those with ideas we find the most offensive.

A private college should be able to control speech and that isn't censorship since the govt isn't involved. A state owned school is a different story and I agree that free speech for all, even what some define as hate speech, should be allowed.

Let the bigots and loony religious nut cases make fools of themselves.

I probably should have been clear that it was a state-owned community college. Regardless, I am still concerned about our cultures intolerance of intolerance. It's the morally "correct" response of people to turn your back on random celebrities, commentators, coworkers etc. over politically incorrect comments made. I get really pissed off every time I hear that some celebrity has been fired from their job etc. for vaguely inappropriate comments (i.e. using lynch and Tiger Woods in the same sentence, although I don't know if that person got fired, I just remember the comments about it). I'm aware this is a tangent, but I think that if you have to bend over backwards to connect the dots to the inflammatory nature of the statement then your political correctness has gotten out of control.

I think that with celebrities, it's safe to assume they are fair game for this since they make comments in the public sphere as a job requirement, therefor it's their responsibility to filter their own speech, but this has permeated our society to corporations etc. and has been fueled by the fear of lawsuits. This leads to political correctness seminars, tolerance camps etc. etc.

So I guess I feel I need to contridict myself (although in a very specific way) and say that the market of public opinion is great to ridicule the "the bigots and loony religious nut cases" but we, as a society, need to calm down about a lot of the vague comments where we need to work to put together as racist, sexist, agist, and any other "ist" you can name.