Hate-crimes law: Another attack on free speech

WND ^ | 10/24/09 | Tom Tancredo

[pissant]

The Senate has now passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act to add homosexuals and "transgendered" to the list of the officially designated victim groups. The House already approved the bill, and President Obama plans on signing it.

I am against the idea of hate crimes to begin with. When it comes to murderers and rapists, I'm an egalitarian. No matter what race, religion, creed, or sexual preference of the perpetrator, I think we should throw the book at them.

But we already have laws against violent crime. The only purpose of hate-crime legislation is to stifle politically incorrect speech. The left repeatedly claims that there is absolutely no way that these laws will be used to criminalize speech. Yet at the same time, they are claiming that conservatism fuels hate crimes.

The open-borders lobby uses this tactic to silence opposition to illegal immigration by associating it with violence against Hispanics. Last year, Barack Obama blamed Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh for "feeding a kind of xenophobia" that is the "reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year."

[pissant]

We miss you Tanc.

[Buckeye McFrog]

if Barry signs it a 14th Amendment case needs to be brought at the earliest opportunity.

[Nosterrex]

I, too, hate the “hate crime” laws. If I kill someone to steal his money, or if I kill him because I hate him, the victim is just as dead. The whole thing is nothing more than an attempt to promote a liberal social ideology. It is simply a twist on the socialistic axiom: all criminals are equal, but some criminals are less equal than others.

I see a time when those promoting Biblical Christianity will be sued and/or imprisoned for teaching against homosexuality. We will see which Christians are willing to suffer for their faith.

[equalitybeforethelaw]

Clearly, we need to promote other hate crime’s legislation, such as:

Targeting of white people for burglary, mugging, and auto-theft should be considered “encroachment” on the federal turf - only the Feds should be able to shake down whitey.

Targeting of asian owned businesses should likewise be considered as a hate crime under the “encroachment” rule.

[nonsporting]

The Feds targeting me as a "potential terrorist" is a hate crime. They hate me because I'm a white, heterosexual, conservative, christian male.

Not all hate is a crime.

[JimSEA]

This moves us closer to drastic limitations on Free Speech. There are two approaches to the limitation of free speech, the “harm principle” or the “offense principle”. They are not mutually exclusive. We are defining down the idea of harm to include what the liberals are calling sedition (read Glenn Beck as the current poster boy). We will soon limit “harmful speech” that attacks the ruling order. Offensive speech will include “hate speech” as defined by progressives.

[clove]

This is not to protect those that are allegedly being racially attacked, the purpose is to squash religious freedoms of all Christians. Make no mistake about it. The laws are already there to protect those who are abused or injured for being different, this is to take away our rights of free speech if it does not line up with what they want to hear.