Hate Crimes Laws: A Conspiracy to "Eradicate" the Christian Right?

[Emit]

Did you know that the passage of hate crimes laws is actually a conspiracy to squelch religious freedom?

Yes....that weak and long-suffering entity known as the Christian Right is claiming that efforts to outlaw targeted hate crimes against homosexual persons through legislation constitute "a guarded effort to 'eradicate' their beliefs."

Stephen Webster of The Raw Story reports that:

A Christian group in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging that a package of hate crimes laws named after murder victim Matthew Shepard is an affront to their religious freedom.

Webster reports that the suit was:

"filed by the Thomas More Law Center -- which bills itself as the religious answer to the American Civil Liberties Union -- the complaint claims that protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people "is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy."

~snip~

Webster quotes writer Timothy Kincaid, blogging for the Box Turtle Bulletin:

"(Because) the law has no effect on their rights to belief or expression of belief, the only logical conclusion is that these four Christians wish to plan for, conspire to commit, or commit an act of violence," he opined.

"Or, perhaps," continues Kincaid, "this is just another example of folks who think that because 'homosexual acts, according to Scripture, are acts of grave depravity that are intrinsically disordered and are contrary to the natural law' then their religion trumps civil law."

I could not say it any better.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/02/11/hate-crimes-laws-a-conspiracy-eradicate-christian-right?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rhrealitycheck+%28RHRealityCheck.org%29

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Depends what you mean by hate crime laws.

In Canada "hate speech" and "no derogatory speech" laws have clearly been abused to silence expression. I have a problem with that, even if I do not agree with what is being said.

That is very different than a hate crime enhancement during the commission of a violent crime.

[SteppingRazor]

4. Agreed. And if the law in question outlawed speech, I would have to agree with the evangelicals...

but the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the law in question here, only adds hate-crime penalties to already-criminal acts, so I can't say I have much of a problem with it.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Well, isn't it obvious?

If you discourage behaviors based on hate, then you're going to impair the ability of hate-based organizations to fully express themselves.

Besides which, there's a lot of financial gain to be had in convincing a bunch of drooling, gibbering haters that they're downtrodden and suppressed because of their righteous hatefulness.

[LiberalLoner]

3. Well, gosh, how DARE we take away their RIGHT to lynch gays and blacks and

wommins who don't keep their (lowly) place and all that? How DARE we? Poor, poor fundies. Their rights are just being stripped from them all the time! Oh noes!

[el_bryanto]

5. There's a certain amount of projection

Based on a sliver of reality (the sliver being that there genuinely are a tiny segment of people with very little power who want to see religion in general and Christianity specifically eliminated).

But most of it is that they imagine that their perceived enemies want to do to them what they want to do to their enemies. They believe that homosexual persons want to use the law to shut them up because they would genuinely love to use the law to shut up homosexual persons.

Bryant

[Viking12]

6. The irony, of course, is that such legislation covers religious beliefs as a 'protected category'