Hate Crimes

Back in 2009, when Congress was working on legislation to expand hate crimes laws to include protections for sexual orientation, the Religious Right pitched a fit and mobilized to try and stop it. 

They failed, but Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel was among the leaders of the movement, going so far as to not only oppose adding sexual orientation to the law but calling for all hate crimes laws to be repealed:

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — in Washington and around the country — should not only reject S. 909, but should also begin working toward repeal of all state and federal hate-crimes laws.

All violent crimes are "hate crimes." Ever known anyone cracked upside the head in love? There may have been a time when hate-crimes laws were temporarily necessary, but that time has come and gone. When the 1968 federal hate-crimes bill passed, there were multiple and verifiable cases of local prosecutors refusing to indict whites for violent crimes committed against blacks. This was the justification for the law at the time.

We've moved well beyond those days, and FBI statistics bear out that reality. In today's America, every citizen, without fail, is both guaranteed and granted equal protection of the law regardless of race, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, dominant hand, favorite color or "American Idol" pick. This renders all extraneous hate-crimes laws woefully obsolete and fatally discriminatory.

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Rather than continuing down the wrong path and creating new hate-crimes laws that unfairly favor whichever boutique special-interest group screams the loudest, we should move toward inclusion and equality for all Americans. We should look to the future instead of the past. We should both reject S. 909 and repeal all outdated and discriminatory hate-crimes laws.

After it was signed into law, Barber even participated in a rally protesting the new legislation as unconstitutional ... which is interesting, since today he will be participating in a press conference along with Peter LaBarbera to demand that the act of vandalism against the site hosting their anti-gay training session be treated as a hate crime:

A coalition of ministers and pro-family advocates is questioning the double-standard on "hate crimes" in the wake of an attack Saturday against Christian Liberty Academy (CLA) -- which was threatened with more violence if it continues to host conservative groups like Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH).

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Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera said, "Some in the media are calling this terrorist act 'vandalism,' which we doubt they would do if the situation were reversed and right-wing extremists threw two large bricks through the glass doors of a gay church."

"As conservatives we oppose the concept of 'hate crimes,' but since hate crimes laws are on the books they must be enforced even-handedly," LaBarbera said. “It is scandalous that a left-wing website post taking credit for this act of domestic terrorism -- and threatening more violence -- is still up and running."

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said hard-left groups like Gay Liberation Network create a "climate of hate" against Christians by demonizing them with vicious lies that equate the defense of Judeo-Christian morality with "hate."

"We will not compromise on God's truth. Neither will we be terrorized into silence," Barber said.

Brad O’Leary has been an emerging voice in the Religious Right thanks to books such as “The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama’s War on American Values,” “God and America’s Leaders,” and “America’s War on Christianity.” Today he received a platform in the Washington Examiner to spew his factually incorrect and conspiratorial views over the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest hate group designations. He suggests that the SPLC’s descriptions of eighteen anti-gay organizations may lead to their future criminalization under recently-passed hate crimes law:

Their crime? These groups represent millions of Americans and speak for tens of millions more who support traditional marriage and believe that homosexuality is biblically wrong.

I don’t use the word “crime” lightly. Calling an organization a “hate group” used to be nothing more than a slur. But in today’s America, such a pejorative may have serious legal connotations.

SPLC knows this, because in 2009 the group was instrumental in getting the Democrat-led Congress to pass, and President Obama to sign, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.

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As I detail in my recently released book, America’s War on Christianity, this new law adds homosexuals and transsexuals to the list of uber-protected citizens under existing federal hate crimes law.

The measure effectively criminalizes any speech that may be “proven” to incite hatred that leads to violence against any of the special classes of citizens (homosexuals, transsexuals, etc.) who are protected under the law.

But regardless of what O’Leary might say, you can’t be prosecuted under hate crimes laws unless you actually commit a crime. The suggestion that the law “criminalizes” speech is a typical and unfounded claim by Religious Right activists like O’Learly, who dismiss the law’s clear stipulation that it cannot be “construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities.” Of course, O’Leary’s assertion that the SPLC may try to push the government into prosecuting or dismantling anti-gay groups ends with a plug for O’Leary’s own organization:

If you think this blatant attempt to criminalize Christianity is outrageous, you’re not alone. In fact, you should go to www.AmericasWarOnChristianity.com to take a quick, 10-question, true-or-false quiz that reveals other shocking ways Christianity is under attack in America.

Attacking Christians during the holy season of Christmas is nothing new, and the SPLC has long been at the forefront of this bigoted tradition. But Christians and Christian groups need to be on guard, and understand that what was once nothing more than vile slander, may now be greasing the skids toward legal prosecution.

Back in February, the Thomas More Law Center announced that it was filing suit to challenge the constitutionality of the recently enacted hate crimes legislation on the grounds that "the sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin."

Of course, the fact that this is patently false as the legislation contains explicit free speech and religious liberty protections isn't going to stop them from claiming that the law is an attempt to outlaw Christianity and protect pedophiles ... which is exactly what Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center and Rick Green of Wallbuilders did yesterday while discussing the issue on Wallbuilders Live:

 

Muise: We're in this [legal fight] for the long haul, and we need to be because those opponents of Christianity and the Christian view, they don't give up so quickly. They're continuing to press and fight as long and hard as they can to ensure that, you know, their really deviant sexual behavior is elevated to a special protected class as a matter of federal law and federal policy and they want to normalize it and want to silence Christians who oppose it.  In fact, when you look at this, to even call it hate crimes legislation, they really want to equate the biblical teaching of homosexuality with racist speech, they want to really vilify it, demonize it, so it's no longer a participant in the marketplace of ideas. I mean this is all part and parcle of really a grand plan.

Green: I have never heard a Christian minister say "go out and do violence against a homosexual," so I don't even understand where they get ... if you get up and say "look, here's the deal, the Bible says this is a sin, no different than adultery is a sin, all these other things, the Bible speaks against this" and if you say this, that somehow that is inciting violence. I don't even get that connection.

Muise: You get the connection only because that's the rhetoric they use to silence those who oppose them. When you look at the Bible, and the Bible's words on homosexuality are quite harsh, as they are for other sinful conduct. Really, I don't know of any other situation where we've elevated deviant sexual behavior and those who engage in it to a special protected class of persons as a matter of federal law and federal policy.

Green: And including pedophiles.

Of course, the great irony of this entire discussion is that if the right-wing claims about hate crimes legislation being designed to silence Christians who speak out against homosexuality were true, then both Green and Muise would immediately be arrested for the very things they just said. 

But that won't happen because their free speech and religious liberty rights have not been violated by the law, which undermines their central claim that hate crimes legislation is unconstitutional because it will silence Christians from speaking out.

In short, Green and Muise just spent a half-hour citing the Bible and railing against the "deviant sexual behavior" of gays, all while claiming that the existence of hate crimes legislation would result in anyone who cited the Bible or railed against gays being hauled off to jail .. and neither of them has been hauled off to jail.

The Oklahoma Senate has exempted the state from federal hate crimes laws, mandating that files of potential hate crimes be withheld or destroyed so that they cannot be used to assist in any federal hate crimes investigation:

Under the new provisions of Senate Bill 1965, reports that were collected during investigations of possible hate crime that did not end in a conviction would be destroyed or kept by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

[Sen. Steve] Russell said the bill is meant to prevent the federal law enforcement officials from taking over a case and applying different standards when local law enforcement has already investigated a case.

Only a few senators questioned Russell about the contents of his proposed amendment.

The measure passed 39-6 and now heads to the House for consideration.

Russell said his bill is meant to protect speech of all kinds.

"We just don’t want the pendulum to swing too far the other way,” he said. "This protects people to do or say whatever they want, as long as it complies with local ordinances.”

Russell said hate crimes should be prosecuted by local officials and not the federal government.

Of course, as we pointed out repeatedly back when we were writing about hate crimes legislation all the time, federal laws protecting things like race and religion have been on the books for more than a decade, but recently "sexual orientation" was added to the list ... and suddenly Oklahoma decided that it wasn't going to comply.  

I'm pretty sure that wasn't merely a coincidence.