Every human being endowed with understanding has the healthy habit of thinking and giving his opinion about his thoughts.
What is proper to a state governed by the rule of law is that its citizens should be free to express their opinions in public and in private. It is also a symptom of civilization and intellectual acumen to know how to listen to voices that are critical or contrary to one's own thoughts and opinions.
In a regime of freedoms such as the one we deserve to have, no one is obliged to follow the dictates of the opinion of others, just as no one is legitimized to silence or cover the mouths of those who express a different opinion by legitimate means.
It is therefore (very) worrying to observe how the public authorities are setting themselves up as a kind of "selective muzzles" that measure with a strange yardstick -very wide on the one hand, and very narrow on the other- the public expressions of citizen opinion.
I am referring to very concrete facts, such as various advertising and opinion campaigns, critical of the legislative whims to which we have become accustomed lately.
To give a recent example: the Department of "equality and feminisms" of the Generalitat banned the circulation of a bus with slogans critical of the "trans law" ("no to child mutilation", "les niñes no existen", etc.), under the pretext of "inciting hatred against a vulnerable group".
It is clear that such slogans in no way incite hatred, and it is regrettable that they have not been able to circulate in Catalonia, just as numerous slogans clearly inciting hatred against Catholics and other groups of citizens who do not follow the diktat political.
Rights in a democratic state cannot be arbitrarily granted to those who jump through the hoops of political correctness and denied to those who disagree.
I would dare to affirm that we are quite close to a new (or not so new) inquisition, which is acting with increasing brazenness and is using an umbrella that - at least in the media - is working for them: that of hate crimes.
This formula is becoming an easy and - never better said - "hateful" wild card to silence dissenting voices.
What in a democratically developed country is nothing more than a legitimate expression of citizen participation and the will to influence the political debate, in our country is openly censored, under a slogan that is a gross manipulation of what is really inciting hatred. This type of criminal offense cannot be used as an alibi to silence the mouths of a part of society.
Citizens are capable of selecting what interests them or not. Confusing (or trying to camouflage) discrepancy with hatred is typical of authoritarian regimes that exercise censorship as self-defense.
Being afraid to have certain voices heard publicly is usually a symptom of intellectual indigence or sectarian totalitarianism; or both at the same time.
Professor at the Faculty of Law of the International University of Catalonia and director of the Institute for Advanced Family Studies. She directs the Chair on Intergenerational Solidarity in the Family (IsFamily Santander Chair) and the Childcare and Family Policies Chair of the Joaquim Molins Figueras Foundation. She is also Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law at UIC Barcelona.
