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The conflict between Dee and Vera has a long history, although
the exact terms used to describe the conflict vary. Dee believes that people
have people have moral rights not to be interfered with in certain
ways. These are sometimes called liberty rights. Their ground
and scope are often debated. She also believes that everyone is
equal in the sense that everyone has the same liberty rights.
From the legal point of view, she believes that everyone should
have equal protection of the law. But equal protection for Dee
means that everyone has the same legal right not to be interfered
with by the state or by private parties and that the state should
enforce each person's right to equal protection according to the
same rules. Vera, on the other hand, believes that people have
more substantive moral equality rights. She might say, for example,
that people have a right to participate equally in the creation
of their culture or a right to equal access to certain opportunities
within our culture. Her view of equality rights forms the basis
of her politics and her main argument for restricting hate speech.
On her view, violating equality rights is the harm that most clearly justifies
restricting hate speech.
The challenge is twofold: (1) to clarify the content of the liberty
and equality rights that Dee and Vera advocate, and (2) to formulate
the basis or the ground for either view of rights.