Mini Replies to Inciting An Evil Riot

Finally caught up with my podcasts! I'm in the middle of the most recent Inciting a Riot now.

It occurs to me that Firelyte takes on these giant, overarching scopes, and my first impulse every time is take the precepts and boil them down to personal actions and thoughts. Not neccessarily a bad thing. So on the process of defining hurtful speech -

Isn't intention part of the prosecution system? My single criminal law class is years ago and very fuzzy, but I seem to recall there being multiple parts in deciding how a crime was prosecuted.
         The professor demonstrated it as: If you have a gun, and live in an apartment that the president passes, but no intention of killing the president, they can't prosecute attempted assassination, because you had ability but not intention. If you dance and wave your arms around your yard at midnight, trying to kill the president, they can't prosecute attempted assassination, because you had intention but no method. You've got to have a method, and an intention, for a prosecution of attempted crime.

FireLyte, feel free to correct me on this. I feel like there was a third thing in there too.

Anyway, I'd like to see this standard applied in questions of terminology, honestly. If someone calls you a scalawag, and they're a history major, the argument could be made that they had the intention, but no method. If someone calls you gay, when you prefer queer, (Or fill in whatever), and it was an honest mistake, why can't more people just say, "Hey, I prefer...whatever" because there was no intention?

Now, if you've already stated a preference, and they keep doing it, we run into the right to be offended. I'm also willing to throw in the caveat that if you can't say it on primetime, or at least not without making it clear that this is NOT the network's word, this is a QUOTE from a REPREHENSIBLE ACTION(Midget Palin Facebook, anyone?)then the offender already has fair warning that this is not a good term.

But seriously. I get called a Wiccan all the time, when I'm not, and I just shrug it off. It's not that difficult to tell the difference between "clueless" and "I hate you".

Mini-posts to continue whenever I feel like it.
Blessed Be!
Pennanti