Spain’s Parliament, in its wisdom, has declared dwarf bullfighting illegal. Not because the bulls are treated cruelly, mind you: oh no, that part is fine. It’s the small bullfighters the legislators find intolerable. (That’s a group of them rehearsing above.)

Comic bullfighting shows in which individuals with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, fight with juvenile bulls are now illegal. A new law bans “shows or leisure activities” employing a disability “to provoke public mockery, ridicule or derision.” As a result, the performers who earned their living putting on such shows are now forbidden from plying their craft, and citizens willing to pay to watch them can no longer do so. This is also embarrassing: the same law directs that “people with disabilities will participate in public shows and recreational activities, including bullfighting, without discrimination.”

Spain’s law arises from a failure to distinguish “Ick” from ethics, the same problem that has led some states to try to ban drag shows. There is no question that the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights would absolutely prohibit a law such as the Spanish dwarf bullfighting ban, and we should be grateful for that. The ethical principles embodied in freedom of expression include autonomy as well as intrinsic fairness and the Golden Rule validity of allowing others to have the same right to make their living as they choose without others deciding that because they wouldn’t make the same choices, those choices shouldn’t be available to anyone.

A major force in pushing through the little bullfighter ban was Felipe Orviz Orviz, a lawyer and activist who also has achondroplasia. He feels personally denigrated by the shows, just as I have been embarrassed by the unethical conduct of some attorney, the knee-jerk idiocy of prominent members of the theater community, and the bigoted statements I’ve heard coming out of the mouths of some family members. His logic, and that of the Spanish Parliament, is identical to that embraced by those who would criminalize “hate speech.”

The first thing that came to mind as I read about this controversy ( the banned performers in Spain are defiant) was strip clubs. I have always, in my very few reluctant forays into these places, found them profoundly depressing. I felt sorry for the women, and hostility toward the men in the audience. I’m sorry that form of entertainment exists, but the way to end it is for the culture to reach a point where not enough men find the acts entertaining, not for elected officials to ban them.

“We are artists and this is our dream,” one of the comic bullfighters, a married father of two, told the New York Times. “This is the right to work, they can’t take it away from us,” he said. “There is a family that eats behind this.” Well, in Spain they can take the right to perform away from the dwarfs, because there’s no national principle that says they can’t. In contrast, freedom of expression is a cultural ethical standard that the U.S. guards scrupulously, but it is increasingly under attack.

For example, Georgia State College of Law Professor Eric Segall, who teaches constitutional law, told Newsweek that the Michigan “pronouns” bill which would criminalize sparking “frightened” feelings in someone in a protected class, is probably unconstitutional. “[T]hat’s unfortunate because my personal view is the law should be constitutional, but I think it’s likely not,” he said. “In a sane world, which is most free countries on Earth, you just outlaw all threats.”

And you know who will decide what kinds of speech constitutes a “threat.”

This guy is teaching law students and future legislators. A lot more is at stake here than dwarf bullfighting.