HATE LAWS HURT LIBERALS, TOO
By Harmony Grant
11 Mar 09
A skinhead with fury-filled eyes and a swastika is the typical
first image of a hate criminal. An evangelical with an anti-homosexual
sign might come second. But it’s hardly just Klansmen who will
be prosecuted or just Bible believers who should worry about hate
laws’ threat to free speech or belief. “Anti-hate” laws
threaten the liberty of a least suspecting group—secular liberals!
Today, two hate crime bills are before our government: the David Ray Hate
Crimes Prevention Act (HR 256) and The David Ray Ritcheson Hate Crime
Prevention Act (HR 262). The first bill expands the original 1968 hate law
and also commands the Federal Sentencing Commission to study “adult recruitment
of juveniles to commit hate crimes.” The Sentencing Commission will thus
enhance punishment for people who incite hate crimes. This vague language could
be interpreted by activist judges to punish adults whose “hateful speech” against
immigrants, homosexuals, or other protected groups allegedly inspires hate crimes.
HR 262 also is a sinister blueprint for an American hate crimes bureaucracy.
It establishes a federal database and clearinghouse on hate crimes, a national
hotline for hate crime or “discrimination” complainers, and a federal
hate crimes website. It demands special privileges—including tax-supported
unemployment compensation, relocation and housing, and counseling—for hate
crime victims. It sets aside money for “education” against hate in
American schools from elementary to university, poisoning minds against politically
incorrect opinions from the cradle and preparing America’s future leaders
to accept speech laws against them. Cost to the taxpayer: 20 million dollars
annually.
Where these hate laws are not an abusive expansion of federal power they are
redundant of existing law’s protection of crime victims. They set the precedent
for criminalizing certain beliefs (biases)—a precedent that will inevitably
harden into a pure speech code, leaving our First Amendment broken in the basement
of history.
Christians are rightly worried about our rights under hate laws to express religious
beliefs that might be seen as “hateful.” But what about the free
speech of non-Christian Americans? What about the free speech of liberals?
Many liberals wish to criticize religion, especially Christianity and Islam.
This freedom is endangered by speech laws. In 2002, a French writer, known for
despising the three monotheistic religions, was
hauled before judges for calling Islam “the stupidest religion.” French
actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has been convicted five times
for hate speech, including a description of Muslims as “invaders.” Last
year she was
fined $23,000 for a letter to France’s interior minister demanding
that animals be stunned before slaughter at a Muslim festival. Under hate speech
laws, what might happen to the atheists who rake religion over the coals, or
ex-Christians who write with biting disgust about the Bible? Browse any bookstore—especially
in a liberal city like mine—and you can find plenty of vitriolic speech
against believers.
Many liberals are also ardent critics of Israel and the Zionist movement. This,
too, could land them in hot water for hate speech. In 2007, Richard
Dawkins was accused of anti-Semitism for saying the American Jewish lobby
is “monopolizing American foreign policy.” Students and teachers
at colleges across the nation have gotten their hands dirty in the Israel-Palestine
debate, which would be severely restricted by broader bans on “hate speech” against
Jews. What if one of them was indicted for expressing their righteous anger—like
the senior
British diplomat who was arrested for what he yelled at the gym TV while
watching coverage of the Israeli attacks on Gaza?
It wouldn’t be America as we know it. It would be America under hate laws.
In each of these countries—France, Canada, Britain, Australia, etc.—seemingly
well-intentioned laws were passed to shield minorities from “discrimination,” “defamation,” or
the trauma of bias-driven crimes or pure speech itself. Those laws empowered
government to crack down on the free expression it decided was offensive,
giving unjust power to whichever people happened to hold office or wear police
uniforms. Hate laws also caused immeasurable self-censorship by artists, thinkers,
writers, and average citizens who could not risk sinking their lives and bank
accounts into legal defense against a charge of “hate speech.”
In the US, most people mistakenly take freedom of speech for granted, naively
believing we are an eternal exception in the freedom-losing west. But a tidal
wave of speech codes already swamps most American universities and workplaces,
where everyone knows there are certain things you just can’t say.
The concept of “discrimination” (against race, religion, sexuality,
age, gender, the list goes on…) has vastly and dangerously limited freedoms
in the western world.
An expanded federal hate law in the US will be the last crest of that suffocating
wave. It is actually more dangerous if the real theft of freedom isn’t
contained in the legislation itself—but meted out by precedent-setting
judges and courts defining the intentionally broad and vague terms of law. As
Robert L. Knight
writes in a recent column about HR 256, “The proposed law, in effect,
would make federal cases out of name-calling. Legitimate opinion and free speech
are thus recast as 'hate speech' that can be suppressed via creeping judicial
activism.”
No Laughing Matter
The western world provides many examples of hate laws’ threat to the
free speech of all citizens, both conservative and liberal. Raucous comedian
and actor Rowan Atkinson (of Mr. Bean fame) routinely critiques religion and
wants his right to do so. In 2004, he described proposed British hate laws
as “draconian” and dangerous. Politicians promised the laws wouldn’t
damage freedom of speech, just as American advocates say today. But Atkinson
knew better and launched a campaign against the law, joined by other members
of Britain’s liberal artistic elite.
In a 2005 speech he said, “As hatred is defined as intense dislike, what
is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion, if the activities or
teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human
rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked?”
“I think that the right to offend is far more important than a right not
to be offended,” said Atkinson. His protest was joined by the director
of the British National Theater, among others, who brought up the example of
a 200-year-old play that excoriates Roman Catholicism. Indeed, much of modern
and postmodern art and media offends religious believers. Could such art potentially
mire the courts in hate crime charges? Critics of Islam—publishers of “blasphemous” cartoons—have
certainly found that true in the last years.
Atkinson’s statements are uncannily similar to what’s happening
in the US, only he
spoke of religious groups, not homosexuals (prime advocates of US laws). "The
excuse for this legislation is that certain faith communities have suffered
harassment and a law is required to address it…But it is not the real
reason behind it. The real reason, it seems to me, is that since the day of
the publication in 1989 of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses,
a hard core of religious thinking in this country has sought a law to grant
religious beliefs and practices immunity from criticism, unfavorable analysis
or ridicule."
Britain’s law against inciting religious hatred was passed in 2006.
If it can happen in Britain, it can happen here. Hate laws enacted by liberals
to protect minorities, or to protect libertine sexuality, could potentially
be used by religious groups to silence liberal criticism.
For example, the organization American Atheists is planning to protest the
UN Geneva Convention in April, which will again discuss bans on defamation
of religion. The American Atheists national communications director wants unbelievers
everywhere to proclaim with him, “I openly and freely state that religion
is ridiculous, and all gods are fictional. I also state that Islam, specifically,
is a barbaric religion, based on the teachings of a false prophet, that promotes
ignorance, hate, and violence (including terrorism)…I do this in direct
violation of the UN resolution, and I personally challenge President Obama
to rebuke this resolution, or order my arrest.”
An atheist should be free to say this, as Christians, Muslims, and Jews should
be free to express their own metaphysical convictions. It’s nice this
particular atheist is defying the UN. But what about defying our own government
and its proposed limits on freedom of speech? Why aren’t liberals doing
that?
Maybe they think American hate laws (and federal amendments) simply punish
violent acts or speech they themselves consider barbaric. They should think
again. Any time, any place that big government is allowed to swell and to deprive any group
of basic freedoms such as speech and thought—or to educate the young
against their ideas, or set up a national hotline for complaints against them—everyone
loses. The Soviet regime burned Bibles and killed believers. It also burned
poetry and protest; it killed free-thinkers, intellectuals and artists. The
nature of power is to grab more, relentlessly swallowing the rights of potentially
rebellious individuals.
When you have a speech code, what happens, for instance, to the right to criticize
government itself?
In Canada, a Marxist feminist professor faced
a hate crimes investigation after saying Americans are “bloodthirsty,
vengeful and calling for blood.” I wonder how many American professors,
writers, and comics could have gotten in trouble for similar words during the
Bush administration if we’d had a more expansive federal hate law.
Secularists Speaking Truth about Hate Laws
It should be clearer now that Christians and far-right fanatics aren’t
the only ones who should protest hate laws. But let’s conclude with more
arguments from secularists themselves. Reason’s senior editor
Jacob Sullum opposes the laws. He explains the rationale behind hate laws is
that “crimes motivated by bigotry do more damage than otherwise identical
crimes with different motivations…Yet random attacks arguably generate
more fear, and hate crimes cause anxiety in the targeted group only when they're
publicized as such …”
I contend that hate crimes are only publicized as hate crimes because
of an aggressive campaign to criminalize certain beliefs. The crimes
themselves are already illegal.
Last year, journalist John Cloud, who wrote about the Matthew Shepard case,
said in Time magazine that while he found it difficult to oppose the
hate law bills (then called the Matthew Shepard Act), he had to.
“Hate-crimes laws feel great to enact,” Cloud
writes, “but they criminalize something vital in a democracy: the right
to be wrong. Let's say you chop off my arm because I'm gay. I would hope you
go to prison for a long time, but should your sentence be even longer just because
I sleep with guys and you disapprove? Don't people have a First Amendment right
to disapprove?
“When did the U.S. government get into the business of criminalizing people's
thoughts?”
