Radical right-wing groups have lobbied aggressively against this bill. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson called it “insidious legislation” that would “silence and punish Christians for their moral beliefs.” (Listen to Dobson HERE.) The Concerned Women for America said the bill is meant to “grant official government recognition to both homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors, and to silence opposition to those behaviors.”
Today, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) reiterated this far-right talking point. He claimed that under the hate crimes bill, you would be charged with a crime if you were “thinking something bad” before you committed a crime against someone. “I just think it takes us down a path that is very scary.”
This news was posted while I was halfway through this diary, and it brings up something I had considered including by was going to let is slide. Well, not anymore.
The idea that "Hate Crimes" constitute "Thought Crimes" is frankly a total load of BullCrap. Everyday in courts all around the country the question of intent and Premeditation are regularly introduced. What you were thinking when you kill someone is the difference between manslaughter, 2nd and 1st degree murder.
This legislation goes after criminal action, like physical assaults, not name-calling or verbal abuse. The bill clearly states that “evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense.”
The hate crimes legislation is by endorsed by 31 state attorneys general and leading law enforcement agencies. Under current law, federal officials are able to investigate and prosecute “attacks based on race, color, national origin and religion and because the victim was attempting to exercise a federally protected right,” but unable to intervene “in cases where women, gay, transgender or disabled Americans are victims of bias-motivated crimes for who they are.”
All it's doing is allowing already protected federal rights, such as voting, from being abridged for women, gays and the disabled in the same way that it is already (allegedly) protected for racial and ethnic minorities.
For the record, I'm not gay - but I don't see any reasonable problem with that, although I do think I have an idea why some of these guys really can't stand the idea.
Here's some more details from the Hate Crime Stats.
Sexual-Orientation Bias
In 2005, law enforcement agencies reported 1,171 hate crime offenses based on sexual- orientation bias.
* 60.9 percent were anti-male homosexual.
* 19.5 percent were anti-homosexual.
* 15.4 percent were anti-female homosexual.
* 2.3 percent were anti-bisexual.
* 2.0 percent were anti-heterosexua
I've long argued that crimes committed against male-homosexuals are actually crimes against women-by-proxy. In the mind of a rough, tough Malboro kind of man - he's is to adored by women - and women only. The idea of some other guy being attracted to him, and possibly thinking about him in the same way he would treat a women - is repugnant. Those guys don't want someone else treating them the way they treat their girlfriends - f*ck THAT NOISE!
So naturally anyone who even sniffs at this "Man's Man" the wrong way is going to get, and deserves a beat down, right?
IMO there's a common thread among the "Macho Men", particular those who join the military (although thankfully far from all of them) linking the mindset that took us from Tailhook to Abu Ghriab.
It's not an accident that General Pace thinks homosexuality is immoral - despite the latest Scientific information which tends to indicate that being gay is biological and not neccesarily psychological, which means that discrimination against them is exactly a vile as that initiated on the basis of race or other biological factors.
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