A few days ago an impassioned anti-gay speech from a 16-year-old girl’s vlog was flagged by enough sensible human beings to be banned. The video was taken down because it violated the site’s Community Guideline against hate speech. Since then, the rant has found a home at other conservative websites, namely Breitbart dot com. The big questions seem to be- is the ignorant bullshit this girl is saying hate speech? And, if it is, does YouTube have the right to take it down? Well, here’s the video in question. Apres la jump, I’ll tell you the answers.
People who are against gays tend to have this idea that what they are doing is not hatred at all. “Just because I believe in traditional marriage,” they say, “doesn’t mean that I hate gays.” Well, yeah, it sort of does, especially when you consider the fact that whenever gay people campaign for their rights, it’s usually construed by conservative groups as an attack on “traditional marriage.” Maybe those gays don’t hate Straights, they just believe in non-traditional marriage. If a government body told heterosexuals that they could not get married, there would be rioting in the street, and for good reason. We all know that marriage is one of the psychologically defined tasks of adulthood! And for people to regulate what is considered 50 percent of adult happiness is, again, just a dick thing to do. This girl also says that America needs to be run on Christian principles, which is a big load of crap. For one thing, we know the founding fathers didn’t intend for America to be a Christian nation. And if they did, it doesn’t really matter. That’s why we can amend the Constitution. Saying that gays shouldn’t be allowed to get married is a fucking ignorant, hate-filled thing to believe, even if you don’t realize it.
But should YouTube have taken the video down, and does this constitute an attack on free speech? Yes, and kind of. We know how constitutionally protected free speech is defined, and, yes, what YouTube is doing here is censorship. It’s censoring an absolutely backward, intellectually bankrupt worldview, but it’s censorship nonetheless. People tend to think YouTube is this platform for free speech, and it sort of is, but it’s also a private company. You might think it’s a bit hypocritical of me to bash the hate-filled rantings of a 16 year old, when, let’s face it, you’re the hate-filled rantings of a 16-year-old right now, but actually, it’s not. What you’re reading right now is on a slice of server space in Chicago somewhere that I pay $150 a year for. When you watched that vlog, it was a girl who posted a video on someone elses website for zero dollars. You see the difference? She never owned her YouTube channel. And when she spends her free time making vlogs that could potentially make the website she posts them on look really, really bad, she has to accept that they might get censored. If I was the owner of a huge, multi-million dollar video hosting company, I’d like to think I might not have taken the video down, because, you know, ‘MERICA. But, then again, YouTube is a modern company and this girl is expressing not-so-modern views, so I can’t say that for sure. If she had posted this on her own website or something, that would have been alright. But YouTube does not belong to her.
The thing about this controversy is that this crap is exactly what everyone loves. This girl’s video wouldn’t have gotten more than a few hundred views if it had not been for the fact that it was challenged. The best thing you can do for an idea that you disagree with is to censor it. The only thing better than a victory for your political agenda is a defeat for your political agenda, because folks love to be the Tiny Underdog Rebel Alliance oppressed by the Evil Octopus Censoring Totalitarian Empire. The funniest part of the polarized American political rhetoric is that both sides think the other is winning, and what YouTube did gave the anti-gay idiots fuel for a few days. The fact that YouTube took down the video just shows their only interest was preserving the feelings of people easily offended by hate-filled diatribes about how they should not have basic rights. If they had really been politically motivated in their actions, they would have ignored it as the flaming ball of stupid it really was.
One last thing. Most people against this crap comment about how the girl’s parents raised her wrong and filled her with hate from birth. That’s probably not true. If this is a sixteen year old girl, her parent’s are probably Eco-Friendly hippies high on Tolerance and Medical Marijuana, and she’s making anti-gay videos to piss them off.
Update: This is her website, which is a thing that exists! Censorship, I think not. Faith, Hope, Politics and UGH.
