The white race is superior. We are more intelligent, have better problem-solving skills, and are the only people who are truly capable of making societies work. Yes – the two first sentences of this column were utter rubbish. Idiotic statement with no basis whatsoever in science. But if you stubbornly insist that the lies are true, should you be allowed to voice them? Legally, you cannot not. If you sang stupid love songs to white supremacy in Mauritius, you would be arrested on a stirring up racial hatred provisional charge faster than you could log out of your Facebook account. But is it a ban that makes sense?

We raise the question because while we have a stricter approach to hate speech based on race and religion than most other countries, it’s still free game to voice lies about people based on other aspects of their beings that they have absolutely no control over. Take sexuality. Enough research has shown that it isn’t a choice, but a biological fact. Sexually, we are born to desire different types of people, like we are born with different body shapes and skin tones. And like the colour of our skin, sexuality isn’t a determining factor of anything at all. Yet, Mauritians are legally allowed today to wave around cardboard signs saying that homosexuals are responsible for the deaths of the 11 people who drowned in Port Louis in the flashfloods. We are legally allowed to claim that homosexuality is the same thing as adultery. As a reply to the Gay Pride Parade held in the capital on Saturday, a group of people did exactly that. And unlike the racists, they walked away freely.

Should anti-gay activists be legally allowed to say what they did? Should Islamophobes be allowed to post lies about Muslims during Ramadan on social media? Let’s first ignore nonsense contributions to the debate in the lines of “Muslims are born with violence in their blood” and “homosexuality isn’t part of the Mauritian culture” (cultures evolve to the better, buddy – it was once part of Mauritian “culture” to shoot black people in the head like dogs). Even if we assume that the goal of the debate is to find the best solution for reducing the influence of people who spread hatred based on race, gender, sexuality or religion – a very reasonable goal – the answer still isn’t clear. Is it better to let haters speak openly, so that we can kill their lies with figures and facts, and reduce the likelihood of them using less visible forums to spread their propaganda and corrupt impressionable young minds far from our eyes? Or, is the price that the targets of their hatred pay so high that we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t react, if we didn’t create laws to protect our fellow citizens?

There are no easy answers to those questions. But what we can easily do is to at least put an end to the inconsistency. The zero-tolerance attitude to racism combined with the full-tolerance approach to hate speech based on sexuality makes zero sense.