H.R. 1913 has just passed the House of Representative and could be up for a vote this week in the Senate. This bill is an expansion of hate crime legislation. It does not include any free speech protections for religious leaders, which could be a big problem down the road. I am against any form of hate crime legislation. I think all violent offenders should be punished severely. I also feel that it is incredibly dangerous to prosecute people based on what we believe they were thinking, instead of what they actually did. That being said, this new bill goes beyond anything we could have imagined. It allows for pedophiles to be considered a protected class. What makes this even more outrageous is the Dem’s outrage at the suggestion of including veterans as a protected class! You read that right, yes- to protecting pedophiles, no-to protecting veterans. Even if I were a supporter of hate crime legislation, I couldn’t possible come up with a way to justify this. Here is the video of the vote against adding amendment to exclude pedophiles as protected class, http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/video/democrats_protect_pedophiles/
and here is the video of Sen. Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) responding to the notion of protecting veterans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvFsVgiy9EA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F
But Wait ! It gets weirder, this bill will make 30 sexual orientations protected classes. Can you name 30 sexual orientations? Because congress refuses to clearly define what they mean anything that is technically an “orientation” is protected. here is the list: http://www.afa.net/sexualorientationshr1913.asp
We’ve got to write, call, or e-mail our senators on this one
I’m glad I stumbled across this post Auger. I like your explanation over this difficult issue. It’s not like anyone endorses murder. Let’s view things equally. I just spent the day putting my thoughts together and wrote an article along these same lines. Good stuff here.