Hate Speech

Much of the discourse about the First Amendment concerns the notion of "hate speech." If fact, much of the discourse about discourse concerns hate speech, and so we have internet companies monitoring and censoring that has some perceived nexus with that term. We hear proclamations that "hate speech is not free speech," and other such gaseous notions without a firm concept of what is and is not "hate speech."

"Hate speech" is a nebulous term that has no legal validity. It has no validity because it is vague, and thus cannot serve as a practical discriminant between what is proper and what is not. The adjective "hate" carries a connotation of being undesirable, but whether this is true or not depends on context. Is it okay to hate genocide, or starvation, or cancer?  Or does the concept of hate speech only become operational when the object of it is an approved class? Consider the three statements:

John Wayne Gacy was a homosexual.

Alan Turing was a homosexual.

Rush Limbaugh is a homosexual.

Are any of these hate speech? Is the first one? And if it is, is the object of the hatred John Wayne Gacy or homosexuals? Is it hate speech in some contexts and not others? Is it hate speech if it's true?
Is it possible for the first statement to be hate speech but not the second? Is the third statement libelous if it is not true? Can something be hate speech if it is not libelous if untrue?

Are the statements:

I hate John Wayne Gacy

I hate Rush Limbaugh

hate speech? They have the word "hate" right there in them! Are these proscribed by "hate speech" principles? Current usage seems to suggest that hate speech only applies to groups, not individuals, and is concerned with potential animus toward those groups, rather than any factual observation about them.

The meaning of hate, and indeed the nature of hate, is not precise enough to be of legal significance. Hate is an emotion, and as with other emotions is subjective. The exact same thought may be motivated by hatred or be completely unrelated to it. The substance of a statement does not conclusively establish its motivation.