While America slept on Wednesday April 25 we woke up to find headlines about how Michelle Obama likes to sneak out and eat at fun restaurants. Not so well covered by the media was the passage of the Hate Crimes bill re-introduced and passed in committee by John Conyers. (D-MI) What does it mean?
The bill co-sponsored along with 42 other representatives and crafted by openly gay Congressmen Barney Frank is riddled with gay agenda politics and disregards the will of the people. It was introduced between sessions when little attention is being paid to discussions or votes in the house and is riddled with skullduggeries. Have legislators now come to the place where their own personal lifestyles can get some lawful credence if they think it deserves it? Let’s see.
Books have been written and a few movies made when ordinary citizens undertook to get a law enacted or changed in America. Years of legal battles, hearings, evidence and impassioned testimonies resulted in landmark legislation that changed the very civil landscape of the nation. In the end a ‘wrong was righted’ and America was made the better for it.
Today we may have come to the place where America is being asked to ‘wrong a right’ with Congressmen Barney Frank’s H.R. 1913. Similar bills such as H.R. 1592 were struck down by Presidential veto in 2007.
With much of the nation distracted by the financial crisis and the new almost patronizing concern for gays fostered by the Obama administration added to the latest trend of representatives voting for anything but the will of the people the stage may be set for the passage of this potentially dangerous bill.
The dangers of the bill are inherent in its very premise and it could serve to become the first bill in our history that guarantees freedoms to one group of citizens at the expense of freedoms to another.
For the best point by point breakdown of the problems with H.R 1913 I would refer anyone with nominal intelligence to the Tony Perkins’ article ‘Why Congress Should Reject Federal Hate Crimes Bill’ posted on the Christian Post April 21, 2009. Perkins shows how the bill comes into conflict with the 14th amendment which guarantees all Americans ‘equal justice under the law.”
The ‘hate crimes bill’ is an affront to states sovereignty and if misinterpreted by any level of law enforcement will quickly become a ‘thought policing’ bill to wrest even more freedoms from the average citizen by essentially demanding that special groups get special justice.
As if a simple act of legislation could remove all hate from the hearts of Americans; this is the first weakness or absurdity of H.R. 1913. There is hate and there is hate. A line from a beloved Irish traditional ballad called ‘Night Ferry’ and made famous by the famed Irish group known as the Furey Brothers says,
Then I walked through the park where my father once held me
Where I learned to love and hate with all my friends
Where I kissed my first girl and my friends they laughed at me
At the gate where we met constantly
The hatred spoken of in this line is as common to man as air and water and is understood to be things we all hate in common. Standing by the gate the friends may have discussed how much they hated their unpleasant and stodgy high school English teacher or the local constable who was always looking at them with suspicion or the soccer star of the rival high school team.
It is the kind of hate that President George H. Walker Bush said he had for the taste of broccoli. Such hate is neither dangerous nor criminal but common to all men. No one can imagine George Bush sneaking out at night and spraying the broccoli fields with weed killer or the Irish boys at the gate planning to kidnap and drown their English teacher, or could they? Apparently the co-sponsors of H.R. 1913 may be the exception to the rule.
H.R. 1913 nearly proposes that anyone who thinks something is repulsive or repugnant will move to destroy it. It further gives credence to the idea that if a thing was destroyed the destroy-ee had to have prior hatred for the thing destroyed and should suffer special penalties for the preconceived hatred as well as the physical violence done to it. This is a bill that may be crafted on the premise of ‘cuckoo is, as cuckoo does’ but it would not stand the scrutiny of a serious comparison to the freedoms allowed under the first amendment.
Setting aside both the laws of man and God for a moment it takes no genius to see that the impulse to cringe at the thought of same sex attraction is a result of a natural feeling, a gut feeling or intrinsic impulse that is part of nature itself. No civil law can properly define it much less prohibit it and only the law of God can condemn it with any legitimate authority.
If H.R. 1913 is to be taken seriously it goes beyond even thought policing and passes up to the level of ‘feeling policing.’ Here is the question; what’s next, facial expression policing, regurgitation causes policing and yucky feeling policing? Have our lawmakers become the purveyors of silliness; sadly the answer is probably yes.
Once again such bills are all too close to thought policing and are the brainchild of political correctness advocates who are now tinkering with fascism and the new American penchant for socialism. Every historical precedent condemns this kind of extremism and only those who know nothing of the roots of communism, Nazism and fascism could possibly see any redemption in rehashing what has already been proven to destroy whole nations and empires.
Preachers and evangelist are particularly worried about this bill because it may curtail their rights of free speech under the first amendment but even worse it would constitute an abridgement of their rights to their own religious convictions.
The Traditional Values Coalition directed by Chairman Louis P. Sheldon said “This bill is an incremental step toward the ultimate objective of the gay agenda to criminalize any speech or thoughts concerning homosexuals or transgenders, etc, which will be used by rogue judges and gay activists to target so-called “hate speech” as an incitement to violence. This has already occurred in Canada, Sweden and Britain.”
A press release issued by the Christian Anti Defamation Commission April 16, 2009 on The Christian Newswire stated “”All freedom loving Americans must voice their opposition to this bill,” said Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.”If this bill passes it lays the foundation for censoring Christians. In other countries, Like in Canada and Sweden, where these types of hate crime laws have been implemented, pastors and Christians have been jailed and fined for their faithful adherence to the biblical values.”
Because the historic churches of America who still retain a conservative Bible based theology yet recognize the writings of the Apostle Paul as authoritative they could conceivably be jailed and punished for preaching that Paul meant business when he said that all forms of homosexuality are a sin in the eyes of God. There is little doubt that if H.R. 1913 is ratified in both houses it will undergo the test in the Supreme Court and many jailed preachers will call for the test not just one.
H.R. 1913 is asking bible believers everywhere to suspend and abandon their faith in and adherence to the scripture but especially to the aforementioned passage penned by Paul and found in Romans 1:22f.
It would be hard to imagine anyone in America or Europe who might dare to demand that any Muslim extract and discard any portion of the Quran to placate the fears of a special group of citizens. That request would be met with violence and rioting beyond the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps the framers of H.R. 1913 know all too well that the Christian admonishment to turn the other cheek would result in little resistance to the bill; so much for equity, fair play and common sense in lawmaking these days.
In the first amendment it is not just our freedom of speech or our freedom of religion that is guaranteed but it is a guarantee that the government cannot meddle with religious tenants whether Biblical or not. In the simplest terms the government cannot infringe on our conscience and demand that we believe only what is deemed as politically correct. Check it for yourself.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Conservative Christianity is established on the Bible and no law in this country can change that according to the first amendment. What we also need to check is the records of those who do gay bashing and commit violent acts against homosexuals. It is there we would see that the very non-violent nature of Christianity not only strictly prohibits violence to homosexuals but the record will show that it’s not Christians who have performed such acts. But politicians are still using Nero’s great excuse to cover their worst behavior with the answer that it was the Christians who burned Rome while the Emperor fiddled.
Burning in lust for those of our own gender or for anything that moves in America today is a fire not lit by the Christians. Gay TV networks, the Cougar, Viagra jingles, condoms for kids and the whole fiery ball of sleaze was not created by the church, the Bible or the preachers who represent either one. It is not likely that prohibiting them from calling homosexuality a sin will do anything to stop this fireball from burning up a once great nation except on a one to one basis. One person who sees the fireball for what it is and steps out of the way, this is what it is all about in real Christianity.
The other paradox created between the proposed legislation and the scriptures is perhaps the oddest of all. In the Epistle of 1st John, chapter one and verse eight John said “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Those who take this seriously think that to force anyone to quit calling homosexuality a sin is proof that truth has been given its walking papers. They also agree that anyone crafting bills to enforce the notion would have no truth in them.
Legislation without truth is a cruel hoax at best and an effort to promote an agenda at everyone else’s expense at worst. Grow up America, H.R. 1913 is beneath you.
As a footnote only hours after this article was written H.R. 1913 passed in the House. Some say it will probably fly through the Senate and there is little chance Barack Obama will veto this bill. The only chance of stopping this bill now would be to barrage our representatives in the Senate with our objections and concern