One of the things I tried to do regularly back when we were following the debate over the expansion of hate crimes protections to cover things like sexual orientation was to point out the fundamental incoherence of the Religious Right’s claims that such an expansion would gives gays “special protections” since, in reality, it was just granting equal protections by adding “sexual orientation” to the list of things like race and religion, which had already been protected by hate crimes legislation for more than a decade.
In essence, it was Christians who had, for years, been protected by hate crimes laws while gays received no protections … and the effort to grant such protections to gays was met with a coordinated outcry from the Right about how it was really an attack on their faith.
In that case, the Right’s bogus claims didn’t prevent this effort from becoming law, but it did become the framework for any similar fights moving forward, as we pointed out last year in noting the Right doing exactly the same thing in opposing anti-bullying legislation.
And which makes this WorldNetDaily article so eerily familiar:
A measure in the Massachusetts statehouse to allow jail time for criticism of homosexuality has been pulled abruptly after a conservative group publicized the move by lawmakers.
The apparent precedent of criminalizing opinions about homosexuality had been predicted by opponents of the nation’s “hate crimes” law before it was adopted as an amendment to a must-pass military bill in Congress and signed by President Obama last year.
According to Mass Resistance, which monitors the state legislature, the lawmakers added to a bill addressing schools an unrelated provision providing the jail time.
The planned addition to the Massachusetts General Laws would have been: “Whoever publishes any false material whether written, printed, electronic, televised, or broadcast with intent to maliciously promote hatred of any group of persons in the commonwealth because of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, or disability shall be guilty of libel and shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.”
Mass Resistance said the move would be “very extreme.”
“Similar laws have been used in Canada and other countries to snuff out critical reporting on the homosexual movement and severely prosecute offenders. Note that the word ‘hatred’ is not defined and is thus completely subjective. And ‘false material’ lays the burden of proof on the accused, under the judgment of a court or tribunal. So even the threat of a long, expensive trial is enough to silence just about everyone,” the group reported.
Spokesman Brian Camenker, however, reported to WND today that less than 24 hours after the issue was publicized, lawmakers removed the provision.
The bill in question came about in response to two recent suicides, but according to MassResistance, this language is nothing but an attempt to persecute and imprison Christians:
Whoever publishes any false material whether written, printed, electronic, televised, or broadcast with intent to maliciously promote hatred of any group of persons in the commonwealth because of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, or disability shall be guilty of libel and shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.
Now compare that the existing Massachusetts lible law:
Whoever publishes any false written or printed material with intent to maliciously promote hatred of any group of persons in the commonwealth because of race, color or religion shall be guilty of libel and shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.
Obviously, it was just an expansion of existing law – which already protects people based on race, color or religion – to include, among other things, sexual orientation.
So apparently MassResistance has no problem with the possibility of fines and imprisonment for anyone who libels, say, Christians … but expanding the law to cover gays would be “very extreme.”
