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National Update

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
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From: Maurine Proctor
Washington, D.C.

Kennedy Throws His Weight
istock/DanielBerman

Just as the Senate is considering the crucial Defense Authorization Bill, Senator Teddy Kennedy has thrown some heavy weight on board in the form of a totally unrelated hate-crimes amendment. Here’s why. When the House passed the Hate Crimes bill earlier this year, the White House indicated that President Bush would veto it if it went on to pass in the Senate. Those who saw hate crimes as a dangerous incursion on religious freedom drew a temporary sigh of relief.
But attaching the hate crimes amendment to defense authorization puts the President in a new bind. Vetoing the hate crimes bill means he would also be vetoing defense authorization. This is Washington-style gamesmanship, attempting to tie the President’s hands.

The vote in the Senate on the hate crimes amendment is Thursday. That’s tomorrow.

Here’s why this hate crimes bill is worth your standing up and speaking out against it.

This bill expands the definition of hate crimes to include those crimes committed against homosexuals and bisexuals, putting this group into an especially protected class and giving them privileged treatment under the law. The hate crimes bill is called the Matthew Shepard Act after the University of Wyoming student who was brutally beaten to death in 1996, a crime widely reported to have been motivated by his homosexuality. Yet, ironically, a 2004 investigative report by ABC television strongly suggested that the attack on Shepard was actually motivated by drugs and not his sexual orientation.

Brutal murder or assault on anyone for any reason is reprehensible, and every crime must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, however, this hate crimes bill poses considerable problems.

Mind Reading
istock/Amanda Rodhe

First, a charge of a hate crime would require a jury to look inside a perpetrator’s mind to determine why he committed the crime. It is certain such probing would take into account what he or she had learned about homosexuality at church, what biblical teachings might have influenced him that could have possibly given him a bias.

Mind-reading is always very dangerous business, but this one could put religious leaders at risk or at least chill their speech. As Daniel Leddy said, “Granted, there are some instances where that [hate] motivation is reasonably ascertainable by the very nature of the defendant’s actions. Burning a cross on a black person’s lawn or painting a swastika on a synagogue are examples.
“Hate crime laws do not, however, limit their reach to such obvious cases. Assume, for example, that three kids approach a fourth boy on a subway station, punch him in the face, forcibly take his cell phone, and shout a few choice racial epithets at him in the process.

“Now police and prosecutors are left to determine whether the victim was selected because of his race or because the perpetrators wanted his cell phone. Perhaps it was a combination of both, with the primary motivation being the cell phone and the secondary one his race. Maybe it was the other way around.”

Hate crimes puts the government in the position of reading a criminal’s thoughts.

Second, hate crimes offers unequal protection under the law, making some victims more protected and special than others. This law would move an entire set of crimes away from local authorities to the federal level, further eroding federalism.

Former Attorney General Ed Meese explained why the “hate crimes” measure was unconstitutional.

Congress only has express constitutional jurisdiction over three crimes: treason, counterfeiting and piracy on the high seas. Because the federal government is one of limited and enumerated powers, Congress must find authority in other constitutional clauses to federalize particular crimes or such acts would violate federalism principles, the Tenth Amendment, or other structural limits in the Constitution.

Third, Leddy noted, “The most worrisome aspect of the law, however, is that it lays the foundation for the eventual enactment of so-called ‘hate speech’ laws similar to those that have emerged in Europe and Canada. These laws make speech a crime when it is deemed to operate in such a way as to incite hatred toward those individuals in the protected classes.

“Given that many religions consider homosexual acts to be gravely sinful, hate speech laws could result in criminal prosecution of clergymen who are merely expounding religious tenets to their congregations. That’s precisely what happened to a Pentecostal preacher in Sweden who was convicted of violating that country’s hate speech laws and sentenced to 30 days in jail after delivering a sermon in which he called homosexuality ‘a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society’.

“Although an appellate court subsequently overturned the conviction, the case stands as an ominous reminder of what a politically ambitious prosecutor could undertake and an activist court just might sanction in the United States if hate speech laws are enacted here