I wrote a sprawling mess of a post last night about this story, so I decided I should start over and express my disgust a little more succinctly. A conservative group is challenging the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009:
(CNSNews.com) – A conservative civil liberties group is challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
The new law, attached to a defense authorization bill that President Obama signed on October 28, 2009, makes it a federal crime to attack someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center says it elevates people engaged in deviant sexual behaviors to a special, protected class of persons under federal law.
The lawsuit naming U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of three pastors and the president of the American Family Association of Michigan.
All of the plaintiffs “take a strong public stand against the homosexual agenda, which seeks to normalize disordered sexual behavior that is contrary to Biblical teaching,” the Law Center said in a news release.
(Emphasis mine, naturally.) I'm pretty sure I engage in "deviant sexual behaviors"--in fact, I think I probably broke the law in Virginia once (or a few times, consecutively). And I'm heterosexual (well, mostly.) I take a strong stand against making gay-bashers a "protected class" just because they hide behind religion. It's very convenient to hate people and blame God. But the blame for anti-social and hateful behavior really needs to be dumped in the laps of those that spawn it--the haters and the bashers.
It doesn't "elevate" a group of people to say that they should not be physically assaulted, or that people should not be encouraged to physically assault them. It does not elevate them to say there should be no laws that particularly exclude them from fully participating in society, either. But it would elevate a few religions to let them dictate laws that exclude based upon their religious biases, and it would "elevate" them to give them a pass when they maintain that hate is just a crucial protected part of their religion.
These people think they know what "deviant" is--when the truth is, they don't know the half about the variety of human sexual experience and have no reason to know, because it very rarely affects them in their day-to-day lives. But violence and eliminationist rhetoric affect all of us--they are the ones who want to do harm by interfering in other people's private lives--whom they choose to make their families with, or simply love. Or even just mutally and consentually pleasure.
They can choose to believe that I, an atheist and a deviant, will answer some day to their God, if that's how they want to see it. But they have no right to make me, or any other "deviant" answerable to them by violence and intimidation. The law just imposes civility. It doesn't oppress them unless they think terrorism against GLBT folks is a sacrament. If that's how it is, I'm extra-glad there's a law. Because that is just crazy. And uncivil.
(Those poor oppressed things--unable to oppress others, and all!)
1 comment:
The religious reich just keeps ratcheting up the hate, every day it seems some new WTF moment.
The leaders may not have plans to personally go out and beat people, but with all their hate-speak, they know they'll incite violence, so my theory is they're trying to protect their followers from consequences.
And their speech is protected, so they get to keep inciting no matter what. So the laws really need to be strong.
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