H-Words and B-Words
It turns out that the particular H-word and B-word that Larry Lessig did not want invoked in commentary about this article were "hero" and "brave," as he has now clarified at his blog. It is clear from the comments that readers have posted there and at other blogs (see e.g this, this, this, this and this) that others are unaware of his request, are disregarding it, or misunderstood, as I did. But if being called brave and heroic against his wishes is the worst thing that happens to Larry out of all this, not only will I not lose sleep, but my faith in humanity will increase exponentially.
As I hope is clear from the posting below, I thought he was probably trying to prevent ugly homophobic commentary linking gays with pedophilia. Worries about that would certainly be reasonable. When people reference the "N-word" they usually mean a harsh term of racist opprobrium, so I assumed that Larry was asking that the "h-word" and "b-word" (which I mistakenly assumed to be "homosexual" and "bisexual") not be invoked pejoratively. I point all this out because it is yet another reminder of how easy it is to be misunderstood, especially when the topic at issue is emotional and complicated.
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