Today in T.M.T.F. (Towny McTownface), the council met for the first time. The first proposal brought up was to establish a cult so that "every school day at 10:45am, all TMTF citizens shall gather and say, "Hail to the Goose!"
This proposal was met with much hilarity and might have passed - but that's where the fact that teachers play the game along side students comes into play*. Gus spoke up and said he wasn't comfortable forcing peeps to follow a specific religion. The proposal would establish an official religion for the town and force people to pledge allegiance to it. "I'm just not O.K. with forcing people to follow a religion. I think they should have the right to their own beliefs," Gus opined
A giant pause button was hit. The council discussed what it would mean to have students say "Hail to the Goose!" against their will. The proposal was quickly rejected. I wondered aloud if our citizens should have certain guaranteed rights that we couldn't take away. We recessed briefly to write new proposals and one of them was a bill to establish Freedom of Expression.
The students all felt strongly about not limiting the expression of religion. But they wondered if all speech should be protected. "What if it's hurtful?" "Who would decide it was hurtful?" "What if it wasn't true?" "Who decides if something is true?" We talked about the prohibition against hate speech in many countries (but not the U.S.). "it seems like it would be hard to decide if some things were hate speech," one student noted. It seemed like the council could spend a lot of its time making judgements about what people said.
"Well, there are school rules against saying mean things - those apply during Village, right?" one person said. I acknowledged that was true - that if one person used words to attack another person in order to hurt them, then the school rules would apply. However, if one peep said something unkind and the two students were on good terms, then the situation would be stay in Village and it would be legal (as the law was written.) This seemed to satisfy everyone and they decided to allow all speech except threats.
Law 13 - A law to establish free speech
All people and peeps have the freedom of expression including religion and speaking. This means that the council cannot make a law that affects the freedom of expression oa certain group or a certain person. This protection does not include threats.
After the law passed, there was some question about whether peeps would say things just because they could. So far, no one has tested the boundaries of the law.
In other news - we're on the land. The peeps will spend a hopefully un-stormy night on the land tonight. Once peeps receive land, they must stay on the land at night. They can build primitive shelters with natural materials. This gives an extra impetus to get houses done!
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