- About 80 people protested the hate crimes bill May 18
outside the US Supreme Court. Two days later, our President met with the
mother of Matthew Shepard to again promise his support for this legislation.
We need more than 80 brave people. Everyone in America should rise against
this freedom-crushing legislation. But the fact is-most Americans already
live under hate laws. We have a landmine in our backyard just waiting to
be finally triggered by hyper-liberal judges and lawyers once they have
their federal law.
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- States' experience with hate crime laws is highly relevant
to anyone who isn't sure if this legislation is as ominous as we describe.
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- In 1988, Colorado became the first state to pass a hate
law. Sexual orientation, including transgender status, was added in 2005.
(This is what hate law advocates are trying to do on the federal level
right now.) Hate laws creator, the Anti-Defamation League, hailed the state:
"For too long, Colorado law has not viewed crimes against gays and
lesbians and people with disabilities as hate crimes. Colorado citizens
in those communities now can take comfort in knowing that such crimes will
receive the special treatment by law enforcement that they deserve."
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- Special treatment? That smoke you smell is the 14th Amendment-"equal
protection under the law"-burning in the lawmakers' trashcan. Michigan's
American Family Association gets it right: "The notion that some victims
are worthy of greater protection than others, especially if it's based
on their choice of sexual behavior, is simply outrageous." (Michigan
lawmakers are currently considering a bill to expand their definition of
a hate crime-just like the bill being considered at the federal level right
now.)
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- Last month, a man in Colorado found guilty of beating
and killing an 18-year-old transgendered woman was sentenced to life without
parole. Did hate crime laws come to the rescue? Hardly. This sentence was
meted out apart from the hate crime charges! Homosexual activists sought
to use the crime as an opportunity to advocate for the federal hate law.
But he already got life without parole because he beat and killed somebody
and, yes, that's already illegal. (In the same way, Matthew Shepard's murderers
were punished without the aid of hate crime laws, which Wyoming did not
and still does not have.)
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- A local attorney and progressive blogger commented, "Every
sexual assault felony in Colorado already carries a maximum penalty of
life in prison. First degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life
without parole. We also (hopefully not much longer) have the death penalty.
What more do people want? Life plus cancer? I'm sure they do, but I hope
they don't get their way."
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- The director of Colorado's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and
Transgender Community Center-the organization hoping to exploit the murder
as propaganda-"said that not having a federal hate-crimes law sends
the message that violence based on sexual orientation is OK." Um,
yeah, violence is okay. Where does our legal system say that?
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- One protestor of hate crime laws suggested that if we
want to stiffen penalties to deter crimes, then let's stiffen the penalties
for all crimes! Of course, that wouldn't do the job of sending a message
from the government about protecting homosexuals, Jews, etc. To whom? To
criminals? No, they aren't listening. The value of this message within
the enhanced penalties of hate laws is to intimidate anyone with a traditional
view of sexuality (or a politically incorrect view of race or religion)
who might want to make their beliefs heard. The federal hate bill, S. 909,
says that if the public speech "induces" anyone to commit a hate
crime, they will end up a federal hate criminal alongside the active offender.
Yes, hate laws are pretty intimidating to those who might quote Biblical
"hate speech" against sodomy.
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- If hate crime laws are completely unnecessary, why are
they promoted? It's because hate laws send a symbolic statement; they enshrine
lawmakers' and lobbies' biases into the law; and they can be used to silence
speech that lawmakers and lobbies dislike. Conservative Selwyn Duke, in
The New American, wrote about how hate laws are not about justice but instead
about this enforcement of contemporary beliefs.
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- So let's make no mistake about the message here: because
some people matter more than others, hating some racial and ethnic groups
is worse than hating othersEighty years ago, it was a lot worse for a black
man to "lust" after a white woman than for a white man to lust
after a black woman, and today we view this as the most backward, invidious
sort of prejudice. But is it any better to create a standard under which
it's worse for a white man to hurt a black man based on "hate"
than the reverse? Is the practice somehow sanitized because we've substituted
one deadly sin, hate, for another, lust, and transposed the privileged
and persecuted groups?
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- This is true. Hate crime laws have nothing to do with
thwarting violence or ending crime. They have everything to do with freedom
of speech, thought and religion-and the rising threat of hate law bureaucracy
locking away those liberties. To paraphrase a famous quote: Justice needs
hate laws like an eagle needs a cage.
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