How do you legislate against hate speech?

Jeremy Waldron thinks he knows:

Once we understand the harm that hate speech may inflict, we are in a better position to grasp the argument in favour of the legislation that restricts it. Such legislation, in the countries where it exists, aims to uphold important elements of basic social order – and in particular the civic status or basic dignity of all who live in the society. Particularly in communities with histories of injustice or in modern conditions of religious or ethnic diversity, one cannot assume that the basic dignitary order will be upheld. There will always be attempts to stigmatise, marginalise, intimidate, or exclude members of distinct and vulnerable groups, and what we call hate speech is often a way of doing this or initiating this. As I have argued in "Dignity and Defamation: The Visibility of Hate" (the 2009 Holmes Lectures at Harvard University), hate speech legislation seeks to uphold a public good by protecting the basic dignitary order of society against this kind of attack.

In a way, Waldron steals my point. "There will always be," he writes, "attempts to stigmatize, marginalize, intimidate, or exclude members of distinct and vulnerable groups, and what we call hate speech is often a way of doing this or initiating this." It's encouraging that even he agrees: there will always be these issues. The one point I think is central to the matter, though, is that of a freedom of speech that is absolute and uncompromising. I'll furnish you with an example. Though I find the Westboro Baptist Church (an organization even renounced by the Ku Klux Klan) to be utterly reprehensible and worthy of endless condemnation for the wicked things they say, I see that it is necessary to defend their right to say those things. Note that this does not constitute a defense of the church, but instead recognition of the dangers of restricting speech, even hateful and vitriolic speech, simply because we do not like it.