...At first glance one might ask, “Who could be against criminalizing group-hate?” The problem comes in the interpretation of “hate.” As regards the volatile issues of homosexuality and transgenderism, one person’s definition of love is defined by another as hate. If you believe that true love means loving homosexual and transsexual persons but not their error—as Augustine once said, “Love not in the person his error, but the person; for the person God made, the error the person himself made”—then it is important for you to know that this ‘Hate’ Crimes bill will legally treat your love as hate. This is not pluralism, tolerance, and diversity. It is oppression.
Since genuine intimidation and violence is already covered by the existing legal code, the ultimate purpose of such a bill can only be to intimidate those who speak out against the endorsement of homosexual practice and transsexualism. In the current political climate—obvious cases in point are repeated oppressions of any who dare speak against homosexual practice in Canada, England, and Scandinavia, to say nothing of sectors of the United States—one cannot assume that there is a common definition of what constitutes hate against homosexual and transsexual persons. Any public words against homosexual practice could be treated legally as words that incite others to violence and/or discrimination against homosexual persons, and thus subject to criminal prosecution.
All that one needs to know about such a hate-speech bill can be summed up by the following conversation between two members of the House Committee on the Judiciary on Apr. 25, 2007, Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), who opposed the “sexual orientation hate” law, and Congressman Arthur Davis (D-Alabama), who supported it (note that all 23 Democrats in the committee supported the Hate Crimes bill; all 17 Republicans opposed it).
Congressman Gohmert: If a minister preaches that sexual relations outside of marriage of a man and woman is wrong, and somebody within that congregation goes out and does an act of violence, and that person says that that minister counseled or induced him through the sermon to commit that act, are you saying under your amendment that in no way could that ever be introduced against the minister?
Congressman Davis: No.
(transcript here, quote from p. 206)
In other words, Gohmert was asking whether Davis’s amendment allegedly safeguarding free speech would prevent a pastor from being held legally liable if a parishioner who committed a violent act against a homosexual person misconstrued the pastor’s sermon as an inducement to violence. Davis’s answer was “no,” such a pastor might be held legally liable in such circumstances. Democrats also turned back an amendment proposed by Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) to the effect that nothing in the bill should be construed as to “limit the religious freedom of any person or group under the Constitution.”
Of course, even if a religious exemption amendment were passed, it would ultimately come to a bait-and-switch tactic. Once “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” infiltrate (one is tempted to say, penetrate) the legal system, they will ultimately prevail over any exemptions, including religious ones (recent developments in Britain make this clear). A “sexual orientation hate” crime bill does virtually all its damage in establishing “sexual orientation” as a category of being that is worth the federal government’s vigorous protection. A person who has a problem with the behavior arising from homosexual “orientation” will be legally established as a “bigot,” even if he or she does not commit a violent crime. That status becomes codified in law.
Read the whole article.The Hate Crimes bill has already passed the House! It will soon be voted on by the Senate. Please call your senators today and ask them to vote NO.
