> I was surprised to read that the right to freedom of speech is not recognized in France.
It is.
The french constitution state:
> La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’homme ; tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l’abus de cette liberté dans les cas déterminés par la loi.
Which mean that you have free speech, BUT, you can be prosecuted if you abuse it as defined by the law. Example of common abuses: defamation (the most common), incitement to ethnic or racial hatred, privacy violation, historical revisionism, intellectual property infringement, etc.
But except "incitement to ethnic or racial hatred" and "historical revisionism" it's mostly the same in the US.
Also, it's not all about the law, during the same sex marriage debates, a lot of homosexual people got beaten by far right / nazi-like groups.
> a lot of homosexual people got beaten by far right / nazi-like groups.
This IS a lie. Do you have any sources?
There have been one attack on a gay couple, hugely used by the government and their supporting medias. Newspapers have implies (no facts) that the culprits where members of the strike against same sex marriage or far right activists. There was then a huge huge buzz to shame the strikers. And finally, 4 months later, the police arrested 4 youths: 3 in a "cité" (public housing, "ghetto") and one was already in jail, all of them well known of the police services for violence facts.
http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/agression-homophobe-a-pari...
Some people in the comments do say that the police delayed the arrest so that the government could shame the protesters against same sex marriage.
One more thing, the man beaten reacts to the arrest on a far left web site.
https://bellaciao.org/fr/spip.php?article137205
And he is in a complete deny, not being able to recognize that those who beat him have nothing in common with those that protested against same sex marriage.
Your first source speaks of "verbal aggression", you cannot take that as a proof for 1200 physical aggressions.
"L’organisme (SOS homophobie) a reçu trois fois plus d’appels et de mails entre le 1er janvier et la fin mars. (1 200 personnes sur trois mois, contre 1 556 sur l'ensemble de l'année 2011)."
"Ces chiffres sont un indicateur important car ils permettent de mesurer la libération de la parole homophobe."
It is. The french constitution state:
> La libre communication des pensées et des opinions est un des droits les plus précieux de l’homme ; tout citoyen peut donc parler, écrire, imprimer librement, sauf à répondre de l’abus de cette liberté dans les cas déterminés par la loi.
Which mean that you have free speech, BUT, you can be prosecuted if you abuse it as defined by the law. Example of common abuses: defamation (the most common), incitement to ethnic or racial hatred, privacy violation, historical revisionism, intellectual property infringement, etc.
But except "incitement to ethnic or racial hatred" and "historical revisionism" it's mostly the same in the US.
Also, it's not all about the law, during the same sex marriage debates, a lot of homosexual people got beaten by far right / nazi-like groups.