Friend, I appreciate your mod efforts, and I support 100% what you're doing here.

Having said that, I think there is a misalignment in terms of free speech definitions.

What I think you're saying is that people are free to express themselves, and the government (in the U.S., Italy, Argentina, wherever) will not censor you for that. However, a consequence of that is that you can ban them. Fair enough.

But people are not referring to the free speech in the country, region or whether. They're specifically referring to the exercising of free speech in the community you are moderating. You're saying that "there is free speech here," then it follows that transphobic comments should be allowed (something I wouldn't like because fuck transphobes.) But since you remove comments that don't align with the community, then the community doesn't have free speech - and that's okay. I'm just referring to the contradiction: "you're allowed to say what you want, but I will ban you if you say this or that" - welp, that just means that "this or that" is not allowed.

I think that's what the other commenters are saying. They're not criticizing you for removing comments. They're calling out that removing comments (as a consequence of speech) and claiming that there is free speech, well no, technically it isn't.