WASHINGTON – Opponents of a hate crimes bill are holding steadfast to their arguments against the legislation, citing international cases as a foreshadowing of what may occur in the United States if the Senate passes it next month.
Among the greatest fears is that under the hate crimes law, pastors and Christians will risk committing a federal crime for expressing the biblical view of homosexuality – leading some to draw ties between the bill and the “Thought Police.”
“See, the bill is not about crime prevention or even civil rights. It’s about outlawing peaceful speech – speech that asserts that homosexual behavior is morally wrong,” wrote Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and former top aid to President Richard Nixon, in a recent commentary.
Christians across the nation have protested the hate crimes bill for months, arguing that the federal bill is not only redundant of state and local laws, but it threatens religious freedom and speech.
The hate crimes legislation seeks to add sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability to the list of racial, ethnic, and religious categories already protected under law. It would also make it easier for the federal government to become involved in hate crimes investigations.
In May, the U.S. House of Representative voted to pass the bill, which now awaits a Senate decision expected next month.
Supporters of the hate crimes bill argue that the legislation will help protect vulnerable groups from hate-motivated violence.
“This bill helps law enforcement protect vulnerable groups from hate-motivated violence, a goal that appeals to the moral foundations of all faith traditions,” said the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance, in a statement.
Yet adamant opponents of the bill point out that a pastor who preaches against homosexuality can be accused of inciting violence if one of his congregants commits an act considered a hate crime under the legislation.
Colson, along with other concerned Christians, have noted that the “Thought Police” has already claimed Christian victims in other countries, where hate crimes includes verbal attacks or peaceful speech.
In Canada, a pastor is currently facing charges before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for writing a letter in June to a local newspaper calling the homosexual agenda “wicked.”
“From kindergarten class on our children, your grandchildren are being strategically targeted, psychologically abused and brainwashed by homosexual and pro-homosexual educators,” Pastor Stephen Boissoin wrote, according to Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink.
The letter caught the attention of a human rights activist who filed a complaint against the pastor for “hate-mongering.” The activist supported his case by pointing to a homosexual who was beaten up two weeks later as evidence that such speech can incite violence.
“The hate crime legislation is hatred and intolerance aimed at ministers and good Christian folks who dare to call sin ‘sin,’” said Dr. Johnny M. Hunger, national director of LEARN (Life Education and Resource Network), at a hate crimes rally in Washington last month.
“Pastors not only have a right, but they have an obligation to state emphatically, that according to Scripture, a man or a woman should not perform a sex act with a person of the same sex,” he said. Continue >>
RSS
Lady Justice is depicted in America as having her eyes blindfolded. This is done as an indication that justice is (or should be) meted out objectively, without fear, favor and prejudice without respect to identity, rank, power or privilege.
Hate crimes legislation is a perversion of that ideal and removes the blindfold allowing prejudice and unequal treatment to prevail under law. Justice perverted is Justice denied!
"Inalienable rights include freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of assembly,and the right to equal protection before the law." - U. S. Department of State
You may remember the widely publicized killing of 21 year old Matthew Shepard who was brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998, allegedly because he was gay. In the aftermath of the case, special Hate Crimes legislation ("the Matthew Shepard Act") was passed.
But there was another murder that you might have forgotten or not even heard about; the Jesse Dirkhising case. It happened about a year later. A 13 year old seventh grader by the name of Jesse Dirkhising was was drugged, raped, sodomized and after five hours torture finally suffocated to death by two homosexual men in an Arkansas apartment. The two predators confessed to using the boy as a sex toy while torturing him to death.
In both crimes the offenders were tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without special hate crimes legislation. So why is it that hate crimes legislation is necessary?
The only logical reason is to deem some people of more value, more worth, than others. It's a resurrection of the failed ideals under which slavery thrived. It creates a "privileged" class and an "under class" which goes against everything in the American ethic. Hate crimes legislation (for all it's good intentions) is purely a Pandora's box full of the creeping tyranny of authority sanctioned by law.
HampsteadPete, Laws against "cruel and unusual punishment" do exist in the U.S. but the death penalty still does exist (and is applied), in most states. Many states like Georgia also still have laws against homosexual actions. Many of the same lawmakers who wrote ordinances against vigilante behaviors (assuming you refer to these in your broad statements) were outspoken opponents of homosexual behaviors as crimes. These laws and rulings inside the U.S. are historic facts. Why shouldn't we have the ongoing liberty to speak our agreement with those laws or to say what we think about any subject at all? Killing the local homosexual and preaching for him or her to repent are different things and I think you know that distinction.
I don't understand! There are laws against stoning children to death for disobedience, and you don't object. There are laws against stoning a wife to death for adultery, and you don't object. There are laws against executing people for blasphemy, and you don't object. There are laws against slavery, and you don't object.
In fact, there are federal and state laws prohibiting most of the penalties in the old testament, and many of those in the new. Why is there such objection to this particular law? I think it's because most of you realize that biblical "morality," if you can call it that, is mostly indefensible in today's world.
You have had your fifteen minutes, or six years, your time to impose your bronze-age "morality" on the rest of us is over. Elections have consequences, as your talk radio idols have been saying for six years, get used to it.
There doesn't seem to be all that much progress since the days of Paul. How many prison terms did he serve? To God's credit, manacling the Apostle to a Roman soldier never slowed the man from Tarsus down. Fearless witnessing before kings and governors, writing Phillipians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, preaching whenever, wherever.
Today we'll need a whole supply of Pauls to declare what God states in His Law and atoning Gospel. The whole counsel of God will get out. The Word of God is "living and active, and strong than any two-edged sword" (Heb. 4:12), even that given to the State by God (Rom 13: 4)
For in the last days many shall depart from the Faith. Art
Someone asked to add an amendment to this legislation to protect ministers from prosecution. It was rejected. Others asked some people from Congress (forget the party) if the way this is worded could a preacher be arrested for just preaching the word of God. After they were pressed they admitted that preachers could be arrested under this legislation.
My former pastor Bishop Carlton Pearson stated that he wanted the preaching of the word of God against homosexuality to be made illegal because it is just as lethal as a preacher taking out a gun in the pulpit and shooting people. If anyone has any doubt about the purpose of this his comments made it clear. He and many other 'ministers' are lobbying to make preaching the Bible illegal. To think that my former pastor woudl support legislation to persecute other Christians is something amazing to me. And people think there is no devil or evil in the world.
Work for the night is coming. Time to leave the cheap gospel of comfortable life and consider the cost. Jailed preachers are much more convincing than beg-a-thon preachers. Bush may veto, but the bill will reappear. Christian soldiers, wake up and rally around the Cross, not around TV sets. You may live the potato life, but your children will pay dearly.