The religious right is claiming that adding sexual orientation to federal hate crimes laws would result in anti-gay pastors being arrested for preaching anti-gay sermons:
It endangers freedom of religion and speech…. Your pastor could go to jail if even a tenuous link could be established between a sermon on homosexuality and some act of violence.
Preach anti-gay sermons, go to jail. The latest salvo from the bigots suggests that some “tenuous link” between hateful sermons and actual anti-gay violence will have to be established, but the religious right has been running around claiming that anti-gay preachers will be arrested for preaching anti-gay sermons whether or not anyone gets bashed before, during, or after a sermon.
This lie—this little bit of false witness—can be easily debunked. Federal hate crimes statutes already cover race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity and sex. A group of liberal pastors should announce that they’re going to mount the pulpit in a particular church at particular time and preach a series of vile, hateful sermons—one right after the other—attacking people of various races and ethnicities, attacking men and women in turn, attacking people for being white, yellow, and brown, and attacking people of other faiths. The semons should rely on biblical passages that have been historically used to justify attacks on and discrimination against people of different faiths, races, ethnicities, genders, etc., though the ages. Alert the authorities and challenge them to come and arrest all these pastors for preaching hate against groups who are already covered by federal hate crime laws.
They won’t be arrested, of course, because it’s not a crime to be a vile, hateful religious bigot now and it won’t be a crime after sexual orientation is added to the federal hate crimes law.
Christ.
This is news?
Since when have modern conservatives ever been afraid to dishonestly conflate what they want people to be afraid is true with what is actually true? It’s such SOP now that I’m not even sure they know how to tell the difference. Maybe that’s even at the core of modern conservatism: inability to distinguish your own idiotic fears and hates from reality.
On Monday Rush Limbaugh gave an end speech on his show where he stated that he had zero animosity or prejudice towards gays, lesbians, bisexuals (he actually said bisexuals).
Oh shit! Time is running out. Run out and beat up a fag while you still can.
How can sexual orientation NOT be on a hate crime law?
“preaching anti-gay sermons” >< “vile, hateful religious bigot” -That is precisely the type of rhetoric that people of faith fear will end up stifling not only religious but sacred scripture altogether.
@4: So you’re afraid that people will tell you you’re wrong for telling other people they’re wrong?
Okay.
You don’t hear many of the truly hateful, vile, pro-slavery passages of the bible cited these days, or many of the insanely sexist ones, because the exact same rhetorical process has happened before.
Welcome to evolving interpretations of scripture, LC. You’re not some man’s property/wife or some other man’s property/slave because of it.
4) Loveschild, what would you call someone who preaches this as biblical proof that you should be a slave?
For some reason, you think it’s okay to gloss over that little tidbit, as long as you can cherry pick scripture to use against people you don’t like.
Well, the Phelps and the WBC aren’t in jail and Kansas and many other states have hate crimes laws that already include sexual orientation.
wikipedia on US HC laws:
http://tinyurl.com/2bs5rj
Ask a lawyer, but I think these laws are seen as tougher than the proposed Matthew Shepard Act.
Uh, yeah. I think they missed part where you actually have to commit a crime to be arrested for a hate “crime.”
The famous Swedish case we had with reverand Åke Green (who said gays are a cancer to society) ended with him being freed on all counts in the supreme court. And this in a pro-queer European country. So I doubt free speach is in danger in the US.
6,7 Both Savage and Rob need to know that slavery in Biblical times was very different from the slavery that was practiced in the American continent with people of African descent. For one it was not based on race and the color of ones skin like it was here. In many cases people sold themselves into slavery or to do labor to provide for their families or pay off debts. Even learned people like physicians and of other professions were slaves of someone else. It could well end up being (if it was done between just individuals) a sort of symbiotic relationship in which strictly labor was provided and the benefactor of it provided in return to the laborer for his material needs. And it was not something that was meant to be long term either. Slavery here in the U.S and its derivatives such as Jim Crow was based exclusively on skin color and on the belief of whites that they were racially superior to black people, that Rob is more in line with your ideology but its not what the Bible says because the Bible clearly does condemn race based slavery. Case in example the Jewish slavery in Egypt which was clearly based on them as a people and nation. We all know what God felt about their slavery and what he did to Egyptians because of it.
Further prove of how the Bible rejects the practice of the type of slavery that was done here can be found on Exodus 21:16 – “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death” I remind you dear Rob in case you have conveniently forgotten that’s how many people of African descent ended here. And for those who want to point out the other way, that being thru slave trading, I remind you of the clear condemnation of slave traders found on 1 Timothy 1:8-11:
” 8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.”
Furthermore Savage, besides overlooking the important role that church played in the abolitionist movement and the subsequent Civil Right fights including Women’s suffrage, you also seem to forget how Christ gave unprecedented importance to women in his ministry, and the important roles that they headed. Have you heard of Mary Magdalene?
@8 beat me to it. If it were serious, Phelps would be the first one in jail.
Has anyone else seen this yet?:
http://www.ktla.com/videobeta/watch/?wat…
@12: And marriage in biblical times was different than what marriage should be today. Thank you so much for proving that point.
Loveschild, I hate to feed a troll, but you ought to watch that video I just posted @15. It’s thanks to people like you that things like this happen. *You personally* share part of the responsibility for what this man suffered.
Loveschild, correct me if I’m wrong, but… are you defending slavery? The practice of forcing people into servitude and buying and selling them?
Check yourself, you fucking nut.
Loveschild,
Poor Joseph, his jealous brothers kidnaped and sold him into slavery. Now, he did tell his brothers that he forgave them, and that he believed that God used their evil for good (All of Egypt in the seven years of famine, plus his entire family after being reunited in Egypt), but they did sell him into slavery. God didn’t put them to death, Jesus is called the Lion of Judah, not the Lion of Joseph. And, Judah (the “first born”, because Reuben the actual first born slept with his father’s common law wife and had is birth rites revoked) did sell his brother Joseph into slavery with the other nine.
The lies are the worst part of all this. What happened to not bearing false witness?
Not that it should be illegal to preach against an oppressed minority, but when has it ever been considered socially acceptable to do so?
Don’t the guys who preach anti-black (rather anti-everything but white) sermons get labeled as extremist crackpots. Doesn’t it become inappropriate for representatives, statesmen and candidates to associate with such critters?
Don’t the guys who preach respect for traditional gender roles get condemned openly by feminist activist groups? Don’t they get (appropriately) tagged as out of touch, or behind the times?
Is it me, or are they complaining that they like gays being acceptable targets, when frankly neither gays nor anyone else should be?
I’m sorry Loveschild but while preaching anti-gay sermons doesn’t make one necessarily vile or hateful, it is a strong indicator of animosity towards gays by the offending minister. When justified by sacred scripture, it is, by definition, religious bigotry.
Fortunately, scripture is not sacred to everyone, nor to the state.
In the meantime, most Christians have long since gotten over recognizing (contrary to scripture) that genocide is bad, and even that whole bit about cloth of mixed threads is okay. They can (and do) get over the bit about gays are okay as well. Sacred scripture is no longer an acceptable excuse for homophobia or intolerance.
A lot of people on the intolerant side of the fence like to say (their) anti-gay sentiments are not bigoted.
A lot.
As if saying so makes it true.
It’s not; they are.
Dear Loveschild,
There are a million ways to interpret the Bible. Unfortunately, religious books are always enigmas, never straightforward, and thus, open to every crackpot’s particular interpretation. The point is not about what the Bible actually says. That’s irrelevant. What is relevant here is that the Bible was used to justify slavery—the oppress-black-people kind of slavery that was practiced in U.S. The Bible has been used to deny women rights and to justify heinous treatment of women by their husbands. In the same way, the crackpots use a few obscure verses of the Bible to justify blatant hate and continuing legal discrimination against gays while at the same time, conveniently ignoring all the other stuff in the Bible. Furthermore, the Bible is irrelevant because we have freedom of religion in this country. We do not have a national religion, but we respect many religions. This translates to not allowing non-rational religious concepts to be used to define our laws.
You realize that liberal pastors are not your puppets, right? And that they would never tag-team-preach a series of hateful and offensive sermons just to prove a point, or at all, because that goes against their moral and religious beliefs?
I hope that you get that, and yet I wonder if you really do.
Loveschild, I appreciate you making all that stuff up, but it doesn’t answer the question. People used the Bible, to justify enslaving others. (Some people still do) What would you call someone who claims the the Bible is proof that you should be a slave?
Also, Why do you not remain silent in church, when the Bible says you must?
Do you think the Bible is correct when it says that women should never hold authority or teach boys or men?
Leviticus 25:44 ” ‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
Dan, which is it, do you favor equal rights for gays or do you favor hate crime laws?
Hate crime laws are a special right. They establish a protected class. They are by definition not part of equal rights Equal rights are your rights to be treated like everyone else. This is the opposite of what hate crime laws do.
Of course there is the Orwellian “thought crime” aspect of hate crime laws which are not even important to the discussion of equal vs special rights.
I am fully in favor of equal rights for gays. I am pro gay marriage, anti DADT and so on. When you push hate crime laws though it undercuts your moral standing on all these other issues. Are you interested in actual fairness or is fairness just a convenient argument you pick up when it suits you?
Is your fairness argument like the ACLU when it works to protect all kinds of speech, or is it more like the Republican state’s rights argument that only applies when they want it to?
Hate crime laws make you sound like a Republican to me.
@Learned Hand – Hate crime laws are there to recognize that when a person has a crime committed against them BECAUSE of an identifying trait (sexual orientation, gender identity, race, religion, etc) it is a crime directed not only at the individual, but at the entire group of people. If a gay person is beaten up and called “fag” and all that, the person committing the crime is not only beating up that person, but also sending a message to any other gay person in the area that they are not safe and not wanted and the same can/will happen to them.
That’s why hate crimes legislation is important, because it is more than just a crime against one person.
mae @28, thank you for adding to my own perspective regarding hate crime legislation. Until now, it always had a bitter taste for feeling like thought crime ordinance. However, if a crime is committed to communicate a hateful sentiment e.g. this is what happens to fags and Canadians in our town, it becomes the same sociopolitical tactic as terrorism.
I would agree, though that as hate crime law is currently written it is a special right. While certain classifications of folk are more commonly victims of hate crimes than others, I think that any crime committed (to borrow from Wikipedia) as a means toward coercion should be regarded as a hate crime, if not an act of terrorism. A radical anarchist attacking fat, white capitalists, a gang lynching a native American allegedly off the res or urban ruffians setting fire to sleeping homeless should all be prosecuted under the same law by which gay-bashers and violent white supremacists are.
That said, they should apply to Scott Roeder, when he assassinated Dr. George Tiller.