HATE LAW CASE STUDY: COLORADO
By Harmony Grant
2 June 09
About 80 people protested
the hate crimes bill May 18 outside the US Supreme Court. Two
days later, our President
met with the mother of Matthew Shepard to again promise his
support for this legislation. We need more than 80 brave people.
Everyone in America should rise against this freedom-crushing legislation.
But the fact is—most Americans already live under hate laws.
We have a landmine in our backyard just waiting to be finally triggered
by hyper-liberal judges and lawyers once they have their federal
law.
States’ experience with hate crime laws is highly relevant to anyone who
isn’t sure if this legislation is as ominous as we describe.
In 1988, Colorado became the first state to pass a hate law. Sexual orientation,
including transgender status, was added in 2005. (This is what hate law advocates
are trying to do on the federal level right now.) Hate laws creator, the Anti-Defamation
League, hailed
the state: “For too long, Colorado law has not viewed crimes against
gays and lesbians and people with disabilities as hate crimes. Colorado citizens
in those communities now can take comfort in knowing that such crimes will receive
the special treatment by law enforcement that they deserve.”
Special treatment? That smoke you smell is the 14th Amendment—“equal
protection under the law”—burning in the lawmakers’ trashcan.
Michigan’s American
Family Association gets it right: “The notion that some victims are
worthy of greater protection than others, especially if it's based on their choice
of sexual behavior, is simply outrageous.” (Michigan lawmakers are currently
considering a bill to expand their definition of a hate crime—just like
the bill being considered at the federal level right now.)
Last month, a man in Colorado found guilty of beating and killing an 18-year-old
transgendered woman was sentenced to life without parole. Did hate crime laws
come to the rescue? Hardly. This sentence was meted out apart from the hate crime
charges! Homosexual activists sought to use the crime as an opportunity to advocate
for the federal hate law. But he already got life without parole because he beat
and killed somebody and, yes, that’s already illegal. (In the same way,
Matthew Shepard’s murderers were punished without the aid of hate
crime laws, which Wyoming did not and still does not have.)
A local attorney and progressive blogger
commented, “Every sexual assault felony in Colorado already carries
a maximum penalty of life in prison. First degree murder carries a mandatory
sentence of life without parole. We also (hopefully not much longer) have the
death penalty. What more do people want? Life plus cancer? I’m sure they
do, but I hope they don’t get their way.”
The
director of Colorado’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender
Community Center—the organization hoping to exploit the murder
as propaganda—“said that not having a federal hate-crimes
law sends the message that violence based on sexual orientation
is OK.” Um, yeah, violence is okay. Where does our legal
system say that?
One protestor of hate crime laws suggested that if we want to stiffen penalties
to deter crimes, then let’s stiffen the penalties for all crimes! Of
course, that wouldn’t do the job of sending a message from the
government about protecting homosexuals, Jews, etc. To whom? To criminals?
No, they aren’t listening. The value of this message within the enhanced
penalties of hate laws is to intimidate anyone with a traditional view of sexuality
(or a politically incorrect view of race or religion) who might want to make
their beliefs heard. The federal hate bill, S. 909, says that if the public
speech "induces" anyone to commit a hate crime, they will end up
a federal hate criminal alongside the active offender. Yes, hate laws
are pretty intimidating to those who might quote Biblical "hate speech" against
sodomy.
If hate crime laws are completely unnecessary, why are they promoted? It’s
because hate laws send a symbolic statement; they enshrine lawmakers’ and
lobbies’ biases into the law; and they can be used to silence speech
that lawmakers and lobbies dislike. Conservative Selwyn Duke, in The New
American, wrote about how hate laws are not about justice but
instead about this enforcement of contemporary beliefs.
So let’s make no mistake about the message here: because
some people matter more than others, hating some racial and ethnic
groups is worse than hating others…Eighty years ago, it was
a lot worse for a black man to “lust” after a white woman
than for a white man to lust after a black woman, and today we view
this as the most backward, invidious sort of prejudice. But is it
any better to create a standard under which it’s worse for
a white man to hurt a black man based on “hate” than
the reverse? Is the practice somehow sanitized because we’ve
substituted one deadly sin, hate, for another, lust, and transposed
the privileged and persecuted groups?
This is true. Hate crime laws have nothing to do with thwarting
violence or ending crime. They have everything to do with freedom
of speech, thought and religion—and the rising threat of hate
law bureaucracy locking away those liberties. To paraphrase a famous
quote: Justice needs hate laws like an eagle needs a cage.
Call all members of the Senate and demand hearings on S. 909, 1-877-851-6437 toll
free and 1-202-225-3121. Call repeatedly (every
other day), especially call the 19
members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The names
are available on the Action Page at www.truthtellers.org.
Tell the Senator: "Please hold hearings on the pedophile-protecting
hate bill S. 909. If the Senator votes for this bill, my friends and I will never
forgive or forget."
Also, encourage staffers to watch the alarming 9-minute video on the home
page of www.truthtellers.org, "Stop
the Pedophile-Protecting Hate Bill!"
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas,
OR 97015
