Is preaching the gospels preaching hatred? Well, according to one preacher, he won’t be able to preach the gospels if the Congress passes the Matthew Shepard Bill. Why? Because his gospels hate gays and lesbians. And as preacher, Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., pastor of the Hope Christian Church in College Park, Md., has stated:
“? In Sweden, Pastor Ake Green was indicted, convicted and sentenced to 30 days because of a hate crime violation. Swedish laws are very strict with regard to hate speech and expressing contempt towards a person?s sexual orientation. Pastor Greens simply read from the Bible and gave the Bible?s view on homosexual practices at his Borgholm, Sweden church. No riots were incited or accounts of personal brutality towards gays occurred after his statements. He was punished based upon statements he made in a normal weekly service.? In Australia, two evangelical pastors were charged with violating the state of Victoria?s ?hate crimes? laws last year for criticizing Islam. This ?offence? took place as part of a Christian conference. Once again there were no riots or personal injury to Muslims as a result of the statements. The judge, contrary to logic, ruled that the pastors had incited ?hatred and fear? against Muslims.? In Canada, a Catholic city councilor was fined $1,000 for simply restating the church?s teaching on homosexuality. He publicly stated that a gay couple?s lifestyle was ?not normal and not natural.? His personal beliefs were deemed ?hate speech? under Canada’s hate crimes law.”
Of course, the article linked to in the title of this posting shows where our preacher is just plain wrong in his misguided analysis of the effects of the Matthew Shepard legislation. The preacher complains that the law would violate his First Amendment right to preach from a book that espouses hatred. The professor from the University of Chicago law school provides ample proof that hate crimes legislation does not violate anyones right to hate speech, either the Nazis or Xian preachers.The Supreme Court has held that, “…the government has a perfectly legitimate interest in punishing “bias-motivated crimes” because such crimes are especially likely to inflict emotional harm on their victims, incite community unrest and provoke retaliatory violence.” What I wonder is why isn’t anyone concerned about preachers lobbying against proposed legislation designed to stop the infliction of emotional harm, inciting community unrest and provoking violence? Anyone care to answer?Peter Nuhn
Look, hate crime laws are just a bad idea. It’s giving the government the power to punish someone for what they were thinking when they committed a crime. It isn’t illegal to be a moron, why should we take steps to make it illegal to be a racist moron?
thedoubter,
Just curious, but would you punish someone who killed another person in a drunken bar fight with the same vigor you would punish someone that gathered toghether a gang of men and marched down the street in white cloths and torches and burn a cross in a black man’s yard, before pulling him out of his house and stringing him up in the tree out front?
So you honestly beleive those two crimes fit in the same category, deserving the same punishment for the taking of a life? I’m not saying I support hate crimes legislation, but I have a hard time getting my head around two such disparate actions and saying they are BOTH hate crimes by definition. I for one would punish the latter much harder than the former.
I agree with thedoubter. Ren, no I’d say we’d have 20 men in prison instead of one drunk. I’m a huge proponent of free speech. What if the Vatican(supreme) court says the bible is protected and anyone committing blasphemy is guilty of hate speech? That’s just how I see it.
thedoubter,
The government always tries to factor in the violator’s thinking when determining their crime. I believe they refer to it as motivation. So that is nothing new, and is absolutely necessary to properly determine the extent of a crime, who may have committed the crime, and to convincingly prosecute them.
But, like you, I do have somewhat of a problem with hate-crime legislation, and can’t necessarily fault the Preachers for their concerns.
One the one hand, I believe that violent crimes, of any kind, are as atrocious as the next. Murder is murder, assault is assault, and prosecuting ? in the case of hate crimes ? based on what the assailant’s beliefs were regarding their victim, seems a dangerous road to go down.
I think, as you pointed out, it can certainly lead to the government becoming thought-police.
On the other hand, hate crimes in this country target very specific groups of people, and by doing so, may need to be prosecuted differently.
Either way, the “emotional harm” part of the legislation seems the most dangerous to me.
Sheesh! I need to proof my posts before posting them!
Ren, the circumstances of the two crimes you described are clearly very different, so I would concede that the punishment should be different. However, as TXatheist pointed out, the only real difference should be that 20 men are punished instead of just one.
DVanWechel, I agree that the motive of a crime does affect how a guilty party is punished. However, the various degrees of assault/murder already cover any possible motivation for a violent crime. Why tack on extra fines because we think that in addition to being a murderer a criminal might also be a racist? He’s already a murderer!
Legislation has but one design: to control the behavior of people by holding them accountable for their actions according to social norms. Murder, assault, theft, and so-forth are all contrary to social norms. So is hatred. Hatred is a mitigating factor; it goes to motivation. Motivation is key in determining level of guilt. That’s why there are levels of homicide: negligent homicide, manslaughter, premeditated homicide.
Hate-crimes legislation factors in when addressing level of guilt, i.e. accountability. Hatred without behavior/action demonstrating that hatred is not a crime (at least not in this country). Harmful behavior/action bolstered by hatred is a crime that is intensified due to its additional affront against social norms.
Hate-crimes legislation carefully addressing *specific* harmful behaviors makes perfect sense to me.
So a side benefit of prosecuting hate-crimes is the possibility of quelling retaliation and unrest.
Seems to make sense, but will it work?
Also, as written, the bill encases fire, firearms and explosions, but what if someone lynches another in a hate crime, or pulls another Matthew Shepard, and beats someone up and ties him to a fence. Why only firearms legislation?
I am tired of hearing so-called liberals arguing in favor of censorship and of basically “thought” crimes.
Christopher Hitchens dealt with this very well in his conference in Toronto some time ago.
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/03/free_speech_6.html#comments
One thing this thread header shows is that just being an atheist doesn’t make you a good person.
Bernarda,
I couldn’t find in this legislation any language prohibiting hate speech/thought. Would you be able to point to where it does so?
“bias motivated crime”. So if you attack someone to steal their money, that is not as bad as a “bias” motivated crime.
The only thing that counts is the crime, the attack, itself. Why should one type of crime and one type of victim be considered more worthy than another?
Someone then has to decide that there is “bias” in the “motivation”.
For example, suppose I am a robber and I am biased against xians. In this hypothetical, I only attack and rob people I believe to be xians because I despise them.
How would that make me worse than any other robber?
My personal opinion, is that speech should be protected at the expense of anything else, including protecting gays from the bible humpers.
My reasoning is the belief that the henious acts committed by the KKK against innocent blacks were PIVITOL in swaying public opinion against racism. We could legislate and legislate to protect homosexuals but the Xians will continue to “think” the same way, in fact they would also feel resentment because of the laws, BUT, and this is an ugly truth, if they are allowed to freely spread hate more and more crazy xians will believe god wants them to “purge” the gays from society and as the “sane” Xians witness the death and destruction in the name of their god it is then and only then, they will begin to change their minds and question the preachers motives for singling out homosexuals for the ultimate punishment when no one is without “sin”.
bernarda:
It would make you “worse than any other robber” because the SOLE reason you are robbing is because you don’t like the person you’re robbing; you aren’t even doing it for the money, you’re doing it out of bigotry. You couldn’t even mount the defense “I needed the money to feed my children” even were it true. Robbing someone to feed your starving children is at least a plausible starting point for a defense. Robbing someone just because you hate them is UTTERLY INDEFENSIBLE, and in the eyes of social norms a crime more deserving of punishment than stealing to feed your children.
Celebrant, you don’t seem to understand my point. In my scenario, I am a robber who makes his living that way. As such I need the money, but I only attack a certain group of people.
Another example. A few months ago the Vatican accused an Italian comedian of hate crimes because of his jokes about the Church. So, suppose someone who saw his routines mocking severely the Church kills a priest. The comedian could be accused of complicity in a hate crime.
Hate crime laws will sooner than later be turned against those who think they are do-gooders in supporting them.
I agree that in principal, free speech should predominate.
However, it gets interesting where the speech may be an incitement to commit a crime. The problem is in the linking of a particular speech to an actual crime or just a potential crime.
Maybe, ordinary conspiracy to commit… should be the appropriate way to control hate speech. When you stand up in front of the lynch mob and tell them why they have to hang someone, that’s conspiracy.
Slippery slope. Especially being an atheist and speaking out against religion I can see how easily something could be misinterpreted as hate speech.
If only the church could show then same dislike towards paedophilia as it does towards consensual homosexual sex. It seems it’s only against homosexual sex if it’s consensual.
There is NO First Amendment issue with hate crime legislation. Criminal activity is not protected expression.
There is a lot of misinformation out there about hate crime laws, and I see a lot of it regurgitated on this thread. But please let me clear up one issue: THERE IS NO FREE SPEECH PROBLEM.
Rusty, examples please.
Bernarda, do you mean examples of misinformation? If so, I can give a couple of quick examples.
First is that hate crime laws “punish someone for being a racist” (or homophobe, or whatever). That’s not true. It is not illegal to be a racist. Furthermore, you can commit crimes as a racist that aren’t hate crimes. Only crimes that meet the statutory standard (and it’s usually hard to meet) will be counted as hate crimes (more accurately, bias crimes). The theory, agree with it or not, is that bias crimes are worse than “ordinary” crimes because they are intended to terrorize an entire community, and thus have a destructive effect beyond that of an “ordinary” crime. Some murders are indeed worse than others, from a societal perspective.
Second, in America “hate speech” is not criminalized by hate crime laws. That’s the misinformation the preachers are spreading, and that many people seem to believe. Note that they always have to use examples from foreign countries that don’t afford the level of protection to free expression that the U.S. does.
rusty, see my earlier comments. The point is is that a crime is a crime: murder, theft, etc., whatever the “motivation” might be.
Suppose I get mad at my neighbor for making too much noise and I punch him out. There is a physical act and offense.
Suppose I get mad at my gay/black neighbor for making too much noise and I don’t like gays or blacks, and assume that I wouldn’t do it if he were white. It is still the same offense. So why should one be punished more severely than the other?
Bernarda, it’s too simplistic to say that “a crime is a crime.” If that were true, every occurrence of a particular criminal act would receive the exact same punishment regardless of circumstances. That isn’t the case, and I’ve never heard anybody argue that it should be.
You implicitly acknowledge this in your hypothetical when you say “there is a physical act and offense.” Objectively, there is only the physical act. It is an offense, legally, because society has elected to create one based on your motive. An element of the offense is your motive.
Here’s another hypothetical. Occasionally, in my sleep, I swing my arm and hit my wife in the face (this is true). That’s not a crime. Yet if I punched her in the face during an argument, it would be a crime. Why? The same physical act happened. But most people would understand that the second situation is worse and deserves punishment, because of the emotional effect on my wife, and the destructive effect on society in general if we did not punish men who intentionally beat their wives.
That’s the idea behind hate crime laws: that hate crimes are more corrosive to society than ordinary crimes because they create greater unrest between conflicting groups.
There’s certainly room for disagreement about whether that’s true. However, many people have only heard one side of the debate. Unfortunately, many people are hearing the laws themselves misrepresented by people like Bishop Jackson.
rusty, your example is so ridiculous as to be stupid. It is so obviously irrelevant that it needs no response.
Then you come up with stuff like “that hate crimes are more corrosive to society than ordinary crimes”.
How so?
Nice adjectives like “hate” and “corrosive” which need to be defined. Who is to write the definition of what constitutes “hate”? I think that preaching about an invisible being in the sky that will send nonbelievers to hell is hate.
Guess what, the major religions that affect us advocate agression against infidels. Atheists have been attacked for their disbelief. Just read the bible and the koran.
You should go up to my first post and watch the Hitchens video I linked.
The point is that if you open this pandora’s box, it is a tool that will be used in unexpected(well, not unexpected by me) and dangerous ways.
Very convenient for you to think so.
Read the rest of my sentence.
I direct your attention to the nearest dictionary. And I said that “bias crime” is the more accurate term. “Hate crime” is the popular term, which is used interchangeably, although it is less accurate.
The rest of your post shows that you are still confused about how bias/hate crime laws work. In the United States they do not, and could not, criminalize speech. If you want to be paranoid like the wacko preachers, be my guest.
Bernarda,
Actually, I found Rusty’s hypothetical to be well conceived AND relevant. To dismiss it as “stupid” is a tactic I would expect from our religious posters on this blog. Please point out how his example is “stupid” because I can’t find an obvious flaw in it.
Rusty gave a very specific reason that bias crimes can be more corrosive to a society than “ordinary” crimes. Did you read his post?
Finally, you still haven’t shown were this particular “hate crime” legislation uses language that criminalizes speech ? in any way. Until you can do so, you just appear to be paranoid and reasonable.
Oops…
and reasonable. = and unreasonable.