For the past two weeks I've been getting heavy email traffic from two different groups about H.R. 1592. H.R. 1592 is Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. The bill just passed the House of Representatives on Thursday by a margin of 237 to 180. You can read the actual text of the bill by clicking here (it's not long). This bill is basically an update to an older hate crimes bill passed in 1969 that has been protecting Americans for almost 40 years from crimes motivated by hatred for a person's race, color, religion, or national origin. This 2007 update includes the crimes motivated by hatred for person's gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. In short, gender and sexual orientation are now covered under this new House bill. What could be so horrible about this?
Well, just ask the people at Traditional Values Coalition. They have been working hard to get this bill defeated, claiming that it will muzzle preachers of all religions from speaking their convictions regarding homosexuality. From what I can tell, the bill does nothing of the sort. It simply enables law enforcement to do a better job bring violent offenders to justice when the violence is carried out for reasons of hatred toward one of these minority groups.
The Human Rights Campaign has been working hard to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals from the infringement of their rights. They have been campaigning hard for the passage of this bill. It is an interesting debate and leaves me confused. I guess I'm surprised that Christians are advocating for hate. Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director, Andrea Lafferty, was quoted saying, "Though allegedly designed to help local law enforcement officials deal with violent hate crimes, this legislation actually creates two new federally-protected minority groups: “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” – both of which are undefined by the law." Actually, the law does define these categories, and, so what? So we protect two new minority groups! Isn't that good? Shouldn't Christians be in favor of protecting anyone at risk of violence?
If some of you who are more familiar with issues of religious liberty really think this law is a covert attempt to silence Christians, please enlighten me. But as it stands now, it seems that the Traditional Values Coalition is just one more right-wing organization spreading hate and bigotry in our already divided world. It's not the spirit of Jesus as far as I can tell.
Below is a short YouTube video featuring Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign. I think it sheds a lot of light on this issue.
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