Why we Don't need Hate Crime Legislation

So I received this tidbit in my emails the other day, very interesting:

No one is in favor of injustice, much less hate, nor is any one is in favor of crime. But this is not really about justice. Honest homosexuals admit that these laws are not needed for law enforcement purposes. This is not like during the time when blacks were being murdered and denied justice by corrupt courts so that the Federal government had to intervene. There is no similar pattern of injustice or lack of enforcement towards victims who are homosexual. The attempt to include sexual orientation into law is only one more step in the process to normalize homosexual behavior. This is part of an incremental strategy to force acceptance of homosexuality into all parts of the culture under the color of law and to punish those who appose it.

Hate crimes enhancements turns justice on its head and creates unequal justice under law. Rather than correcting an inequity, like it originally did for blacks, now it creates injustice. Hates crimes creates a class of criminals who are “more guilty,” not because of what they did, but because of what they might have been thinking. It also creates unequal justice for different classes of victims, some who are considered “more worthy” of greater legal protection than others. Thomas Jefferson said, “the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions…” The government is not competent to read a person's mind, much less criminalize his opinions.

The Problems

1. Proving hatred as a motivation is very difficult and a matter of opinion, thus prone to abuse. By the way, when has a criminal ever lovingly murdered, assaulted or vandalized? Hate crimes assumes that when a particular person is harmed there is harm to a similar class of victims. This harm is simply assumed, and the criminal is unjustly punished for an unproven crime.
   
2. What other groups are we supposed to add to the victim class? There is no limit to the number of groups one can think of by characteristics- size, parentage, freckles, glasses, left handed, red hair? Equal justice under law is the just, equitable biblical standard.
   
3. It is rather easy to fake the appearance of a hate crime in order to gain sympathy for one’s group. This has happened and has been increasing in popularity.
   
4. Murder, assault and vandalism are already criminalized under state statutes. Jurisdiction for these kinds of crimes belong to the states, unless the states are not enforcing them.
   
5. Hate crime laws are merely “feel-good statutes” which are being used primarily to effect social change by normalizing homosexual behavior. In some states with hate crimes people have been accused of hate crimes simply for preaching the Gospel which the state defines as biased against a particular group. This is an assault on First Amendment rights of free speech, Religious Liberty and freedom of conscience. If these intrusive laws are passed, the truth about the homosexual behavior will be suppressed by those who call the truth hate. The church has a spiritual obligation to call all sinners to repentance, including those who indulge in homosexual behavior, lest they suffer its negative consequences emotionally, physically, spiritually and eternally.

Christians Already Jailed for Practicing Freedom of Speech

1. St. Petersburg, Fla. Five Christians including two pastors were arrested at a homosexual rally for stepping onto the public sidewalk instead staying caged in their officially designated "free speech zone."
   
2. Elmira, N.Y. The Elmira police arrested seven Christians for praying in a public park where a homosexual festival was getting started.
   
3. Crystal Lake, Ill. Two 16-year-old girls are facing felony "hate crime" charges for the content of their flyers.
   
4. Philadelphia, Pa. Arlene Elshinnawy, a 75-year-old grandmother of three, and Linda Beckman, a 70-year-old grandmother of 10 (along with nine others), were arrested for sharing their faith on the public sidewalk.

Here is the problem, once again, a Christian writer has bent the truth to fit their needs. After much research, this is what I have found concerning each of the cases listed.

• St. Petersburg, Fla. Five Christians, including two pastors, were arrested at a homosexual rally for stepping onto the public sidewalk instead of staying caged in their officially designated "free speech zone." Their signs were also "illegal" because they were slightly "bigger than their torsos." Apparently, large people are entitled to more speech than those with smaller frames.

Surprise -- the leader of the protests, Rev. Billy Ball, is another bullhorn wielding preacher, and it turns out that one of his protesters reportedly frightened an 8-year-old child by walking up to her and her mother with a sign that said, "You're Going To Hell.

2. Elmira, N.Y. The Elmira police arrested seven Christians for praying in a public park where a homosexual festival was getting started. A female officer told the group, "You're not going to enter the park, and you're not going to share your religion with anybody in this park." The group of seven didn't say anything, but got down on their faces and silently prayed.

They were promptly placed in handcuffs.

left out was an important detail : According to a June 24 Elmira Star-Gazette article on the incident, the group did their silent praying in front of the stage, thus disrupting the event. Also failed to mention, as the Star-Gazette detailed, that the protesters were quickly released and returned to the event, though not in the park.

A June 27 Star-Gazette article described the leader of the protesters, Julian Raven, as "a born-again Christian street preacher" and quoted an Elmira pastor as describing Raven's preaching style as "zealous and militant." The article added:

Julian preaches loudly and with a passion that borders on anger. He holds a Bible in one hand and waves his other in the air as punctuation, while he wails of woes and bellows about schools removing the Ten Commandments, television shows "full of filth" and violence spreading across the city and the nation.


3. Crystal Lake, Illinois. Two 16 year old girls are facing felony "hate crime" charges for the content of their flyers.

Another misleadingly benign statement. The girls in Crystal Lake, in fact, faced charges after allegedly plastering their high school’s halls and distributing anti-gay fliers directed towards a fellow student. The flyers apparently stemmed from a recent dispute between one of the girls who was arrested and one of the boys who was pictured. Classmates said the flier showed a picture of two boys kissing along with the words, "God hates fags." The prosecuting attorney said the students targeted a specific person and his sexual orientation; others have called it merely a prank that went too far. Seems like bullying to me!

4. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Arlene Elshinnawy, a 75-year-old grandmother of three, and Linda Beckman, a 70-year-old grandmother of 10 (along with nine others), were arrested for sharing their faith on the public sidewalk.

Elshinnawy and Beckman are the two women painted as innocent grandmothers. As documented, "sharing their faith on the public sidewalk" is a misleadingly benign description of what they were doing; in fact, they were doing the bidding of street preacher Michael Marcavage of the group Repent America, who used a bullhorn to try an interrupt a stage performance at a gay street festival in Philadelphia, and were arrested only after they refused to go to an area on the edge of the event.

Seems we do indeed need Hate Crime Legislation. Quiet frankly, it looks as though minorities need to be protested from Christians. One need only ask, why would you want to be a Christian?