I can think of at least 3 heavily debated contexts in which the phrase "compelled speech" is invoked. I'm going to rank the first 3 to come to mind, in ascending order of justifiability.
A: Pornography sites are required to call themselves inappropriate for those under 18.
B: Nutrition Information labels and/or cigarette health hazard warnings.
C: People working with kids and teenagers (teachers, youth center employees, etc.) are required to report when they have reason to believe a child or teenager is being abused.
For obvious reasons I rank C the highest. That said, I don't trust the profit motive of the private sector with schools and youth centers anyway, so if it were up to me, I'd nationalize them all and make reporting suspected abuse part of their contracts, rather than the law itself, to pre-emptively head off any "compelled speech" concerns. Not much of a "compelled" speech when you agreed to it.
I rank B above A for two reasons. Firstly, nutrition info can literally be a matter of life and death, especially for those with medical conditions requiring knowledge of certain foodstuff/vitamin/mineral content. (Though this one applies more to the food than to the cigarettes.
Secondly, the difference between porn warnings and food/cigarette labels is that the latter just give you the facts, and leave it up to you what to make of them. For instance, "cigarettes will poison your lungs" is probably a bit more pressing an issue for someone breathing in the clean air of Toronto than someone breathing in the polluted air of Tianjin. Porn warnings, on the other hand, rely on the support of a malign fusion of the religious right and radical feminists, (no way in hell would either group be numerous enough on their own to make society feel justified in resorting to compelled speech on their behalf) who have different reasons than each other for objecting to teenage viewing of pornography, which I suspect is likely why they call it inappropriate without stating why. Even if they specified their objections; and could get the radical feminists and religious right to agree on what objections to specify; it should be up to the individual viewer to agree or disagree with them.
Curiously, "label GMOs" legislation is more often opposed from a "you legitimize fear of GMOs" standpoint than a "but it's compelled speech" standpoint. You almost never hear "they legitimize fear of porn" for the porn one.
I don't think freedom of speech should be considered absolute, but I do think any limit on it should be met with a lot of scrutiny.
So, NSG, what do you make of these examples? Can you think of any other in which "compelled speech" concerns are often invoked?
