I agree. I was originally thinking of titling it just as the video, but then I started thinking it should be a question.

But there is no question mark... and you can't edit an OP, so there you go.

On the subject: They are not planning to outlaw cults, just forbid them to proselytize in the public space, which I 100% support.

That's not the issue. What you can do is to classify religious proselytizing as harrassment - which it undeniably is, with all its death threats and sinister manipulation of people's fears and issues. Then you can move on to prosecute and jail people who are spreading this mind virus as the criminals that they are. This is not about the freedom of speech. This is a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that volitional distribution of superstition is a crime against society. I am sorry, but I really cannot see any way of being nice about this. Religion is a disease. The only way to get rid of a disease is to isolate the agent - the virus - and exterminate it. You are a Quixotic fool if you think that "information" is going to be a sufficient cure. What is needed is some real political work in order to get these people off the streets, off the broadcasting networks, out of the schools, and away from the public space alltogether.

I'd like to step back and reframe this. You have to set a few ground rules to debate or else both sides end up throwing straw men. Marquis, how do you define free speech and why doesn't proselytizing fall under that umbrella?

I am aware of this conundrum. All I can say is that one person's freedom of speech can never imply another person's duty to listen. There are also issues of invasion of your privacy here. The 'message' of religion is an insidious one, often promising things they cannot possibly deliver. In this respect, they are con artists who are preying on people's doubts and anxieties, whereas the only useful thing they provide is company and a sense of belongig to a group that is sharing something 'special' (which of course is serious enough in its own right). 

However, I am not meaning that religion should be banned or outlawed, only that their 'freedom' to present their 'message' should be limited much the same way that people's 'freedom' to take sexual advantage of others (who might be in a vulnerable place like that) are strictly limited both by law and custom. I myself feel the same kind of disgust for what to me is the same type of predatorial behaviour. Let there be religions, by all means. But let them be 'passive', in the sense that they can only supply legally where there is an explicit demand, and quit being pushy.

Please tell me where I claimed people should be forced to listen to you or me or anyone? Freedom of speech does not garuntee an audience. I agree. "Freedom of speech" only garuntees your right to say something without fear of GOVERNMENT having you arrested.

I get tired of atheists and believers missing my point.

THE LAW is already there in our common  interest of not wanting to be physically harmed. When ANYONE, believer or atheist, start demanding laws being free from being offended WHAT THEY forget is that the powers that be may not always agree to what that is. By giving that kind of power to others you can potentially end up silencing yourself.

THE BEST WAY FOR ALL on either side is to agree that we won't physically harm each other. By agreeing to that common interest it frees us up to COMPETE with our words without fear.

I reject the idea of State Based ideologies.

I believe only through freedom can we have a reasonable society where rights are upheld.

The most rational way to govern is to base it on freedom.

Freedoms to and freedoms from.     I heard someone say that your freedoms extend your arms length.    So, yeah someone is free to speak to you but you're free to tell them to get off your property (yet another point of common law) and you're free to ignore them or tell them to get fucked.

The more you try to surpress an idea the more people cling to it and in fact it spreads to others.   Take for example the Roman persecutions of christians.   I think that you might not have seen christianity become anything more than a small judaistic cult if it weren't for the roman emperors trying to stomp them out.    I think it is possible that christianity would have been an otherwise indistinguishable cult of the day and might very well have died out.

That's why governments don't work that are based on strict ideologies and remove the freedoms from others. Invariably taking freedoms (religious or otherwise) from others leads down that road. I think the 20th century 'athiestic' governments like soviet russia or albania were great examples of failures of ideologue states which were due to reactionary policies after being oppressed by religious governments. So instead of striking a balance and allowing religions to die of their own accord they struck back and hard and in the process we can see that those kind of systems just don't work.

Want to know how to get rid of religions? We evolve out of our adolescent need for it as a society and as a species.

Religion is a societal concept which you might call the primordial ancestor of science. It was a first stab at explaining the universe and we're quickly outgrowing our need for it.  It was also a primordial ancestor of law.

Sure it will take a long time to occur but eventually it will just be a quaint cultural footnote in our evolutionary and societal past.   I don't want to see an athiestic taliban any more than I want a christian or muslim taliban.   It would be just as stupid.