Complex question Staines and I doubt I have the definitive view.
There has to be an element of folk drawing a line at what they feel uncomfortable with that others might not. I support that and am generally not in favour of censoring what others think / say since we have laws that are supposed to do that.
However, the laws cannot cover every eventuality which leads to the grey areas that often cause the mischief. As far as I know, it is not illegal to tell a joke about violent sex inflicted on a non consenting person but I don't think you'll find such a joke in our joke thread and I severely doubt any of us tell such jokes!
Time is an interesting factor. You raise the question of whether it's OK to tell jokes regarding events of hundreds of years ago as opposed to more recent similar dark events. I think not. If something crosses that line of decency, I don't see how merely the passage of time makes that dark event less reprehensible and more open to humour.
I suppose the two big ones that are commonly involved in humour are race and religion.
Regarding race, many cultures have a fall guy that is the butt of humour for that race. My folks used to tell jokes about a man called Nasraddin Hodja - check out this link
https://www.ottomansouvenir.com/Nasraddin_Hodja/Nasraddin_Hodja_2.htm and a few years back I discovered the Sikh humour of Santa Singh which, according to the Wiki page that follows, is not that popular in the Sikh community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardarji_joke
The point is, I would not tell that sort of joke to a person from that culture since I think it would run the risk of offence but if they chose to share with me, I'd probably join in the humour.
Religion is the other biggie and many of the jokes on our joke thread centre around religion with perhaps a disproportionately large contribution from the Catholic community.
I think two things about potentially offensive jokes about religion.
Firstly, God is big enough and bad enough to do a bit of smiting ('Smite me oh mighty Smiter' - Bruce Almighty!) should he so choose and I'm happy to leave that decision to Him.
Secondly, I'd like a level playing field. So if we're to have jokes involving characters or issues that some hold sacred then there ought to be a level playing field where ALL sacred characters are subjected to the same treatment be it jokes or other media.
As I stated, I'm quite certain I don't have the definitive view and don't seek to impose my view on others but do reserve the right to challenge with debate and dialogue if I think something has crossed a line it perhaps should not have done. I did raise just such a question in our joke thread over jokes re Medline McCann and the main contributor kindly refrained from further similar postings.
Interesting debate as ever.
