Could a state make a state makes “hate crime” a felony and includes speech based charges, I suppose, though none have attempted it. I'd suggest in that case the state law would be a far bigger problem than any potential federal involvement. IMO this should be opposed as an unecessary expansion of federal government into the realm of the states. Since it addresses violent crime, opposing it as anti-Christian is open to misinterpritation.
Had CAIR opposed the legislation, and Frontpagemagazine come out with a scathing editorial focusing on the evil of religiously motivated violent crime, you'd see support on this site.
>>Could a state make a state makes “hate crime” a felony and includes speech based charges, I suppose, though none have attempted it.<<
Criminalizing speech as a hate crime has already happened on a state level.
California Penal Code section 422.6 offers a wider interpretation of hate crime, defining it as “No person, whether or not acting under color of law, shall by force or threat of force, willfully injure, intimidate, interfere with, oppress, or threaten any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of this state or by the Constitution or laws of the United States because of the other person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender, or sexual orientation, or because he or she perceives that the other person has one or more of those characteristics.”[1]