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Do religious or other civil rights groups have the right to censor free speech or artistic expression?

A while back, the video game company Capcom was making a game called, Zack and Wiki, about a treasure hunter. However, the main character wasn't just any treasure hunter, he was also apparently a Muslim. This prompted CAIR (an American-Islamic relations group) to threaten legal action against Capcom if they did not remove the reference to the character's relgion. The phrase "allahu akhbar" was removed from the game as well as any other referrences of that nature. The same thing happened to Nintendo when they were making Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. One song in the game contained an Arabic chant but they were forced to remove it and replace it with a Gregorian one due to pressure from religious groups. As you may know Jerry Lewis accidentally uttered the word "faggot" a couple of days back and he was forced to apologize after GLADD pressured him into doing so. Don Imus did something similar except towards a female black basketball player a while back. While I understand that Don Imus and Jerry Lewis did something that was indeed offensive, isn't also freedom of speech? What about video games or movies that try to potray ethnic or religious characters/references? Isn't that freedom of expression? Say if Nintendo or Capcom didn't change the Islamic or Arabic references in their video games or if Jerry Lewis didn't apologize. Would it be possible for the civil rights groups to sue them and force them into changing what they did? The reason this concerns me is because I've always thought about getting into script writing for video games or movies. Say if I were to make a character who is a racist but eventually learns to accept other people. If a civil rights group were offended by this, could they actually force me into changing the script? Or how about if I made a video game plot with a Muslim as the main character? Would I face severe consequences if I refused change his religion like Capcom did? I meant if they were offended by the character being a racist without knowing the rest of the story. Thomas Paine: I'm not a very political person and I am not looking for a debate. I just want to know if they really have the power to tell others what they can or can't say. I mean aside from threats. Can they really sue people for this? I don't know much about law so that's why i am asking. Isn't it freedom of speech?

Public Comments

1. Get off your platform. Religious groups have always been the groups willing to sacrifice for freedom, while liberals shut up and held onto their Social Service jobs while stirring up others to do the fighting.
2. You can say what you want in this country (with some government limitations), but you may face economic consequences. Immus and Lewis are public figures who rely on advertising dollars to support their shows. Lewis also relies on people willing to donate to his charitable cause. By blurting out unacceptable epitaphs, these men risked losing the backing they need in order to be successful. With the video games, the companies who manufactured the games were probably more fearful of losing sales, and having bad press against their companies, than any real threat of a lawsuit. Thus, they could have kept the Muslem references, however, at the risk of losing sales.
3. In court, I'm not sure; you should ask a lawyer about this. But even without a courtroom and a judge, they may be able to "force" you to change simply by affecting your sales. If they wield enough influence and get their message out to enough people, they may convince enough of your potential customers not to buy your product. So before you create something "controversial" it's always wise to consider which people you may offend OR how many people you may offend. Public opinion still carries a LOT of weight.
4. This isn't really censorship but self-censorship. If you make a game or movie or something that shows people in a bad light, those people will complain. You have to decide then whether or not it's worth it to make them angry. Usually you are looking for the biggest possible audience, so you will change the material by yourself, your own decision. Groups that are traditionally the victims of discrimination or slurs are the most able to do this, for reasons that are obvious, and I think even more fair. Sometimes I think these groups are wrong, but a lot of times writers or directors or game designers didn't mean to offend them and are only too happy to change their stuff or to apologize. Jerry Lewis wasn't -forced- to apologize. Nobody held a gun to his head or threatened to fire him or anything. He CHOSE to apologize because refusing to apologize would have hurt his reputation more than to just make an unfortunate remark and then stick by it. He didn't say f****t deliberately to piss of gay people. Years ago, black people protested their kids reading Huckleberry Finn in school. I thought H.F was an incredible book! The whole theme of the book is how slavery was wrong, how a boy has a conflict between his religious teaching that supports slavery and his conscience that says it's wrong. So why did blacks complain? Because it had the 'n word' in it. But that's how people talked in those days! In fact the use of that word by religious, virtuous, upstanding Southern people shows how slavery (and race in general) was seen in the south. So I thought that was pretty silly. But normally the n-word just makes people mad these days, and usually that's the whole purpose of using it!
5. anyone can sue anyone else for anything. None of the people were "forced" to settle or apologize. However, many folks are raised by their mama's to be polite and not cause unnecessary distress to others. Very often, people like that will apologize rather than fight and assert (correctly) that they have the right to offend whomever they will.