You cannot ban ignorance. It is a describing word. You cannot have a war on ignorance or a war on hate any more than you can have a war on terror, as they are all adjectives. Describing words are subjective labels given to something by somebody. There’s no consistency in defining such a thing.

When you get into legislation meant to police “hate speech,” you leave everything up for an incredible level of interpretation. Another dynamic of this that would be vastly important is who is thus defining something as hate, and what is their potential agenda, as 1 person’s definition of “hate” or “offensive” wouldn’t match the next person’s definition. It’s a subjective topic no matter what, left up to the whim of some random person or a group of people. This is precisely what the 1st Amendment is for, to protect all speech, because if you take certain speech away then you begin to go down a path that just keeps extending itself. This would most certainly lead to the selective enforcement of such a law, one primary example being that it could be used to squash and criminalize political dissent.

On 4/16 such legislation was introduced by Senator Edward Markey (S. 2219) and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (H.R. 3878), calling for examining the role that telecommunications plays in encouraging hate crimes. Can someone please define “encouraging”? Of course, there were no specifics made available, and there won’t be. Instead the bill is ripe with open-endedness, as likely intended. So if you say something in the future that another person may deem controversial, you could potentially be swept up and blamed for a physical act that may have been perpetrated by a completely separate individual. These erroneous links could and would be made under such legislation. Do not be naive.

The Boston Herald put it best…

U.S. Senator Ed Markey wants to empower an obscure federal agency to begin scouring the internet, TV and radio for speech it finds threatening.

Bringing this into the realm of dog-related issues… I would not advocate for dog-hating psychopaths like Colleen Lynn of DogsBite.org or Dawn James of Craven Desires to be silenced or erased from the history of the internet. Why? Because I believe in the 1st Amendment and would not want to be silenced myself, or have anyone else silenced by someone who doesn’t agree with them. It is Colleen Lynn’s right to want to see Pit Bulls banned, and to lobby for their bans. It is Colleen Lynn’s right to spread lies and misinformation, fear and irrationality. It is Colleen Lynn’s right to say, both publicly and privately, that she wants to see shelter Pit Bulls dead and have all dogs looking like them euthanized out of existence. As repugnant and evil as those views are, she lives in America and she can have them.

You fight this awfulness by exposing it and by educating people on the opposite ideas. You fight this awfulness by promoting the truth, by showing prejudicial individuals for who they are, by having rational debate, by pointing out the human recklessness that’s almost always involved in incidents that are used after the fact to drive fear, and by delving far deeper into the many issues that so often scapegoat Pit Bulls and/or lead to their death.

Banning things doesn’t fix these problems. Banning dogs surely doesn’t fix them. You may not be able to define what kind of dog it is, but it’s still a dog; and a dog isn’t an adjective, it’s a noun that’s identifiable by categorizing a certain species. How would banning undefinable adjectives fix anything then? That’s an exercise in futility, as you will spend more time arguing over what is and what isn’t, and less time over promoting actual issue-related education and inclusiveness. Slogans don’t educate. Ending “ignorance” and “hate” in regards to dog breeds takes fleshing out the many issues that lead to that ignorance and hate.

One more thing… Ignorance is different than hate. Are you hatefully ignorant and bigoted or are you just uneducated on a specific issue? Because both types of people would technically fall under the phrasing of “ignorant,” would they not? Just know that the “uneducated on a specific issue or indifferent” portion of the population is colossally greater than the “hatefully ignorant and bigoted” portion of the population. So if you denigrate them equally by tossing around the phrasing of “ignorance” with little to no context, you run the risk of alienating the biggest group of genuine society.

To those advocating on behalf of Pit Bulls or any other type of dog, remember this: “The enemy of love is not hate, but fear.” ~ Gene Robinson.

It absolutely would not be a stretch to say that most people who claim to have certain negative feelings about Pit Bulls, that those feelings are actually rooted in fear and not hate. Even if they are adamant about their dislike, it’s usually fear that’s driving their concerns. Fear, lack of exposure, traveled information, populated rhetoric. You can’t ban fear either, or force someone to meet a dog. These concerns need acknowledged, empathized with, attempted to be understood. Go from there. When you respond to fear with anger you have little to no chance of reaching another person.