Marsh «very passionately» supports euthanasia, describing it as «a sign of
deeply advanced and
civilised society: Two markers of civilisation are the number of
people riding bicycles and the presence of euthanasia.»
It presages a law captured by the rhetoric of the right to freedom of expression without due regard to the value underlying the particular exercise of that right; a law in which, under the guise of the right to freedom of expression, the «right» to offend can be exercised without responsibility or restraint providing it does not cause a disruption or disturbance in the nature of public disorder; a law in which an impoverished amoral concept of «public order» is judicially ordained; a law in which the right to freedom of expression trumps — or tramples upon — other rights and values which are the vital rights and properties of a free and democratic society; a law to which any number of vulnerable individuals and minorities may be exposed to uncivil, and even odious, ethnic, sexist, homophobic, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and anti-Islamic taunts providing no public disorder results; a law in which good and decent
people can be used as fodder to promote a cause or promote an action for which they are not responsible and over which they have no direct control; a law which demeans the dignity of the
persons adversely affected by those asserting their right to freedom of expression in a disorderly or offensive manner; a law in which the mores or standards of society are set without regard to the reasonable expectations of citizens in a free and democratic society; and a law marked by a lack of empathy by the sensibilities, feelings and emotional frailties of
people who can be
deeply and genuinely affronted by language and behaviour that is beyond the pale in a civil and
civilised society.