“The United Kingdom has been known in recent decades as the precursor to what happens in the United States as far as social policy. Its unmistakable liberal drift has worked its way to the West Coast of America and tends to drift Eastward from there. One of the United Kingdom’s most notorious movements in the last decade has been a movement against free speech, punishing those who offend others through the use of words. From personal experience, as one who has been to the United Kingdom to preach in the open air, one thing we had to be careful of was preaching openly against homosexuality. The crowds were particularly prone to revolt against this kind of preaching which would tend to land us in hot water with the police for ‘hate speech.’ Simply put, it isn’t allowed. That, however, could be changing in a landmark ruling by a United Kingdom Court of Appeals which recently upheld the right to ‘offend’ in a ruling for free speech. Daily Mail reports, ‘Judges have insisted that freedom of speech includes the right to offend in a landmark ruling which could help to turn the tide on woke intolerance after a feminist who called a transgender woman a “pig in a wig” and a “man” was cleared.’ Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr. Justice Warby said: ‘Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.’ They added that ‘free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another.’ The judgment from two senior members of the judiciary will set a precedent for future cases involving freedom of speech.”
“Right to Offend Upheld,” Reformation Charlotte, Dec. 18, 2020