More negative reactions to the bill/law

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Negative reaction to the bill (Cont'd):

Negative reaction after the bill was signed into law:

The basic theme cited by many people who are opposed to the law is that hate crime law will criminalize hate speech, particularly hate speech directed against gays and lesbians. This is in spite of the amendment that was added to the bill to offer additional protection for those who want to disseminate hate speech.

Total count of criminal charges or convictions for hate speech remains zero:

President Obama signed the hate crimes bill into law on 2009-OCT-28, thus creating the first major federal civil rights legislation to protect every American from physical attacks on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Many social and religious conservatives were concerned that people will be charged under this hate crimes law for uttering hate speech, even though the law specifically guarantees freedom of hate speech.

We have decided to revisit this concern regularly and report any such charges if they were to occur.

As of 2010-JAN-27, three months have passed since the signing of the bill. If the fears of social and religious conservatives were valid, one would expect at least a few such charges by now. However, to our knowledge, no charges for hate speech have been laid under this hate crimes law. We are confident that none have actually been laid, because if one were, every conservative Christian news source would be certain to report the event.

Author comment: About the future: (Bias alert!)

One of the really ironic consequences of this law may not have been anticipated by its supporters.

Fundamentalist and other evangelical Christian news sources have been unified in their fear-based coverage of this bill. They have predicted that pastors and any other Christian expressing hate speech targeting lesbians and gays may be arrested under this law. This, of course, is most unlikely to happen. After all, this bill merely doubles the protected groups that were covered by a very similar earlier law that has been on the books for decades, and nobody has been charged under that law for hate speech. We have heard a fundamentalist teleminister call for stoning Neopagans to death. We have heard of a Baptist minister in Texas calling on the U.S. Army to napalm Wiccans to death. Neither was charged with any crime. If advocating genocide won't get a pastor charged, certainly ordinary denigration of LGBT people will not either.

Many conservative Christians now fear being charged under this new law for inciting violence or for conspiracy to commit assault. The end result is that they might become so frightened of this law that many may carefully avoid expressing hate speech directed against LGBT people. Thus, hate speech might become less frequent, even as the law performs its intended task by reducing violent hate crime based on race, color, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability.

Under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a hate speech law would be unconstitutional. But this new hate crimes law may well have the effect of a hate speech law That is a great development. We can benefit from a great reduction of hate in the American culture. I think that Jesus would be happy.

Although there is no real possibility that anyone will be prosecuted for hate speech under this hate crime law, a little cooling off of the rhetoric can only improve society and the quest of LGBT people for equality and dignity.

What troubles me is that concern over religious freedom of belief has morphed in recent years into concern over the religious freedom to direct hate speech against women and minorities. I long for the days when religious freedom meant allowing people to hold beliefs without oppression. Now religious freedom has become the freedom to attack, denigrate and humiliate others.

We have owned a series of Palm Pilot PDAs down through the years which have been essentially useless because we have never been able to download files from our PC to the PDA reliably. We tried on a variety of PCs and operating systems and PDAs, without any luck. But they do have an excellent calendar program that runs on the PC and is supplied with the PDA. I plan to set it up to send me a reminder once a quarter to search out any charges under this law of persons who have not directly committed a hate-based violent act. If we find any, we will be certain to report them on this website.

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

1. Steve Jordahl, "Hate-Crimes Bill Passes Senate," CitizenLink, 2009-OCT-23, at: http://www.citizenlink.org/
2. Barrett Duke, "Gay hate crimes bill and the assault on evangelical belief," ERLC, 2009-OCT-27, at: http://erlc.com/
3. "Pat Robertson on hate crimes bill," 700 club,  2009-OCT-30. at: http://thinkprogress.org/
4. David Neiwert, "Pat Robertson denounces hate-crimes bill, falsely claims it doesn't cover religious bias," Crooks and Liars, 2009-OCT-29, at: http://crooksandliars.com/
5. Tim Townsend, "Conservative pastors believe new hate crime law restricts freedom of preach," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2009-OCT-31, at: http://www.stltoday.com/