Rick Perry Signed Hate Crimes Bill in Texas

"Thus, if Perry were to become the Republican nominee for president, both major presidential candidates would be on record as having signed into law what is arguably the most dangerous element of homosexual activists’ political agenda, which we routinely characterize — when criticizing Obama and other Democrats who advocate it — as threatening to result in the criminalization of Christianity"

From The New American

By Kelly Holt

Not long after Rick Perry became Governor of Texas, according to an Associated Press release on May 12, 2001 he signed the James Byrd Hate Crimes Act (HB 587) named for a black man in Jasper, Texas, who was dragged to death behind a pickup in 1998.

In a bill-signing ceremony on May 11, 2001 Perry said:

As the Governor of our diverse state, in all matters it is my desire to seek common ground for the common good. In the end, we are all Texans and we must be united as we walk together into the future. That’s why today I have signed House Bill 587 into law. Texas has always been a tough-on-crime state. With my signature today, Texas now has stronger criminal penalties against crime motivated by hate.

President Obama signed a similar law, and the Texas statute signed by Perry does effectively establish a special “protected class” status including enhanced sentencing for crimes allegedly motivated by bias against it.

Hate Crime

From Catholic World News
By Diogenes

A pro-life activist is dead. The man who shot him says that he wanted to kill the man because of his pro-life signs. But thanks to the First Amendment-- not the "emanations from the penumbra" but the words of the amendment itself-- it's legal to hold up signs even when some people dislike those signs.

So I'm sure that within a matter of hours liberal politicians will:

• Denounce the murder of James Pouillon as a hate crime.
• Call for heavier penalties on criminals who assault pro-lifers.
• Insist that abortion advocates tone down their rhetoric to avoid inflaming passions against pro-lifers.
• Suggest sensitivity training in public schools to help children understand pro-life activists.
• Introduce protective legislation establishing a 25-foot "bubble zone" around pro-life activists to protect them from aggressive rivals.
  

New Federal ‘Hate Crimes’ Law Challenged on Constitutional Grounds

We are very proud that our friend and Sunlit Uplands columnist, Gary Glenn, is the lead plaintiff challenging this unconstitutional assault on freedom of speech and religious liberty. Gary is a valiant champion of freedom and we will follow this story closely.

From CNSNews
By Susan Jones

A conservative civil liberties group is challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.

The new law, attached to a defense authorization bill that President Obama signed on October 28, 2009, makes it a federal crime to attack someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center says it elevates people engaged in deviant sexual behaviors to a special, protected class of persons under federal law.

The lawsuit naming U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of three pastors and the president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

All of the plaintiffs “take a strong public stand against the homosexual agenda, which seeks to normalize disordered sexual behavior that is contrary to Biblical teaching,” the Law Center said in a news release.

“There is no legitimate law enforcement need for this federal law,’ said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center.

“This is part of the list of political payoffs to homosexual advocacy groups for support of Barack Obama in the last presidential election,” Thompson continued. “The sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin. It elevates those persons who engage in deviant sexual behaviors, including pedophiles, to a special protected class of persons as a matter of federal law and policy.”

According to the Law Center, of the 1.38 million violent crimes in the U.S. reported by the FBI in 2008, only 243 were considered to be motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.

The four plaintiffs are Michigan Pastors Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette, James Combs, and Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

The lawsuit alleges that the new law violates the plaintiffs’ rights to freedom of speech, expressive association, and free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, and it violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment. The lawsuit also alleges that Congress lacked authority to enact the legislation under the Tenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.

The lawsuit says the Hate Crimes Prevention Act “provides law enforcement with authorization and justification to conduct federal investigative and other federal law enforcement actions against Plaintiffs and others deemed to be opponents of homosexual activism, the homosexual lifestyle, and the homosexual agenda,” thereby expanding the jurisdiction of the FBI and other federal law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies.

Robert Muise, who is handling the case, said the new law promotes two Orwellian concepts: “It creates a special class of persons who are ‘more equal than others’ based on nothing more than deviant, sexual behavior. And it creates ‘thought crimes’ by criminalizing certain ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and the involvement of such ideas, beliefs, and opinions in a crime will make it deserving of federal prosecution."

He said it gives government officials the power "to decide which thoughts are criminal under federal law and which are not.”

The Thomas More Law Center describes its mission as defending and promoting “America’s Christian heritage and moral values, including the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life.”

New Hate Crimes Law is a Mistake says Star Parker

Star Parker has spoken out on the lunacy of creating a special class of victims based on sexual perversion. The founder and president of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), has released the following statement:

"President Barack Obama has signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Actually, he signed into law the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act tacked onto which was the hate crimes legislation.

Sen. Harry Reid, our brave Democratic majority leader, slipped the hate crimes bill into the defense authorization bill to avoid having to have our senators consider the controversial hate crimes bill on its own.

It's for good reason that our Democratic legislators wanted to hide under a rock while passing this terrible piece of legislation. It may help them with the far left wing of their party. But weakening and damaging our country is not something to be proud of. And that is exactly what this new hate crime law does.

The bill adds extra penalties to violent crimes when they are deemed motivated by gender, sexual orientation, or disabilities. It's the first major expansion of hate crimes legislation originally passed in 1968, targeted then to crimes aimed at race, color, religion, and national origin.

After signing this new law, Obama celebrated it by saying that in this nation we should "embrace our differences."

But law isn't about embracing our differences. It is about providing equal and non-arbitrary protection to all citizens.

Equal protection for every individual American under the law is what the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, passed after the Civil War, guarantees. That this nation takes this guarantee seriously -- that there are no classes of individuals treated differently under the law -- has been a justifiable obsession of blacks.

A society in which all life is not valued the same, where murder of one citizen is not the same as the murder of another citizen, is a horror that black Americans have known too well.

So it is a particular irony that this major expansion of the politicization of our law has been signed by our first black president.

What could it possibly mean that the penalty for the same act of violence -- for murder -- may be different depending on what might be deemed to be the motivation?

Can you imagine a football game where the penalty for roughing the passer is 20 yards rather than 15 yards if the referee concludes that the violence perpetrated was motivated because the quarterback was homosexual?

Is it not a sign of our own pathology that we now have codified that it is worse to murder a homosexual than someone who has committed adultery, even with your husband or wife, or who has slandered or robbed? Isn't the point murder?

Can we really believe that someone capable of murder is less likely to do so if the victim is a homosexual and the penalties are greater?

It should be clear that hate crime law has nothing to do with improving our law but rather with creating favored political classes. It is something that should be hateful to everyone who cares about a free society, and particularly hateful to those, such as blacks, who have been victimized by politicization of law.

How about the sad and pathetic recent murder of a 16-year-old Christian black honor student in Chicago by four teenage thugs, also black?

A hate crime?

Black on black homicides are tearing up our inner cities. Hate crimes?

The social breakdown that produces the disproportionate violence in black America is the product of the same moral relativism and politicization of law that has produced hate crime bills.

We already have a source, which instructs against murder and to love your neighbor as yourself.

But this has been banned from our schools and our public spaces.

So once again, in what is becoming our Godless nation, we mistake the disease for the cure."

Christians on High Alert Over Hate Crimes Passage

A hate crimes bill sent to President Obama for his signature raises a red flag for Christians.

From OneNewsNow
By Charlie Butts

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a hate crimes bill that Christian leaders have warned for years could greatly infringe on the rights of those who speak too loudly about their religious views. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel agrees with most observers that President Obama will sign the measure -- adding that the president desires to "throw a bone to homosexual activists because they have been breathing down his neck...and this is a way to hold them off."

Barber views the legislation as something akin to a muzzle. "Unfortunately, it places Christians -- people of faith, people who have traditional values relative to sexual immorality...in an untenable position," says the attorney.

He notes that several years ago, a similar law in Pennsylvania resulted in the arrest of 11 Christians who were presenting the gospel at a Philadelphia homosexual rally. Barber goes on to say that the federal bill "will chill religious liberty and free speech -- and that is its intended purpose, not to protect anybody from hate crimes."

And as for pastors? "There is a very weak exemption in [the bill] which is totally illusory, and a religious exemption is not going to protect pastors," responds Barber. "Renegade prosecutors and politically correct leftists in positions of authority can subjectively determine what is or is not a hate crime." And then move on to prosecution, he adds.

Barber explains that Liberty Counsel intends to challenge the constitutionality of the hate crimes legislation.

Sunlit Uplands: We "Rejoice" in Being #1 in More Ways than One

Sunlit Uplands' #1 ranking by BlogNetNews is not the only proof of our effectively promoting the traditional values of "Faith, Freedom, Defense of the West, and Renewal of the Culture" in South Carolina's blogosphere.

Our effectiveness can also be measured and validated by the volume and intensity of vitriol sent our way by obviously disturbed and threatened liberals. The more effective we are at promoting our values, and thus the greater the threat the Radical Left perceives us to pose to theirs, the more intense and hostile will grow their attacks.

And on that scale, Sunlit Uplands is hurtling headlong toward the top as well. As evidenced by one particularly disturbed liberal, whose reactionary bile can only be described as over the top.

Perhaps overcome by a rush of wishful thinking, South Carolina's #4 Liberal Blogger wore his religious bigotry and personal hostility (dare we say "hate"?) on his sleeve Monday when he gleefully imagined my death:

"One can only wonder what [Cassidy's] last thoughts would be if someone ran him to ground in his parish at confession (surely, as an aside, those sessions must be truly marvelous exercises in magical realism) or taking communion for the astonishing and popular spew of hate and bigotry his blog presents daily, and pumped a few lead rounds into him."

Several observations...

First, this is an instructive example of what the word "hate" means to the left-wing hypocrites who seek ultimately to criminalize the free speech and thought of anyone who dares disagree with them.

1. If a conservative traditional values advocate merely expresses disagreement with or opposition to liberals' repressive political agenda, such mere expression constitutes "hate and bigotry."

2. On the other hand, if a member of the anointed left publishes a blog post graphically fantasizing about the violent murder of a conservative, that is of course merely reasoned discourse.

We also note that South Carolina's #4 Liberal Blogger makes frequent reference to all things "gay," even posting at the top of his blog a running count of how many times even our socialist president has failed to sufficiently safeguard the "rights" of those who engage in homosexual behavior.

Thus, we feel comfortable simply asking if SC#4LB should be judged by the same standard routinely demanded by professionally-aggrieved homosexual activist groups.

Their repressive thought- and speech-control rationale goes something like this, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force: "Anti-gay rhetoric and anti-gay violence go hand-in-hand. The right wing is creating the most hostile atmosphere for (homosexual) people in recent memory. Hate violence is a logical extension of these rhetorical, legislative, and electoral attacks. When anti-gay rhetoric escalates, so does anti-gay violence. Hate crimes are a result of that intolerance. No one should condone violence against any group of people, nor should they contribute to an atmosphere that fosters such intolerance and violence."

Thus, because Dr. James Dobson publicly advocates traditional Biblical morality, he is accused by homosexual activists and their left-wing media allies of being morally responsible for inciting the beating death of Matthew Shepard. (In other words, by merely expressing a traditional moral code, Dobson is characterized as evil, hateful, and reprehensible.)

If Cardinal Maida of Detroit publicly supports in his state a Marriage Protection Amendment such as that approved by 77 percent of South Carolina voters, then homosexual activists say he is morally responsible for inciting the falsely alleged beating death of a homosexual senior citizen in Detroit -- who as it turned out, according to the medical examiner, died of arthritic paralysis. (In other words, merely by defending the mainstream value of traditional marriage, Cardinal Maida is portrayed as both evil, hateful, and reprehensible -- or as one prominent homosexual activist called him, "recklessly wicked.")

Similarly, if Sunlit Uplands regularly posts comments promoting traditional American values, Biblical morality, or even sacred music, then -- in the eyes of disturbed leftists such as SC#4LB -- this author obviously must also be both evil, hateful, and reprehensible. (And in good company, at that.)

Which raises this simple "what's good for the goose" question:

By painting Dr. Dobson and Cardinal Maida and myself as evil, hateful, and reprehensible, and thus obviously worthy of contempt, do homosexual activists and their allies create a climate of hostility in which someone might be encouraged to commit acts of violence against us? Does anti-conservative rhetoric and anti-conservative violence go hand in hand? When anti-conservative rhetoric escalates, does anti-conservative violence follow? No one should condone violence against any group of people, so should liberals continue to contribute to an atmosphere that fosters intolerance and violence toward conservatives?

If merely expressing a different point of view amounts to "hate," as leftists define the term, does that term not all the more so apply -- in the real world -- to SC#4LB's graphic imagining of my being pumped full of lead while at church? Should I now go running to the federal government to demand special protection? If someone gives me a dirty look, or worse, should I demand specially-enhanced prison sentence for my assailant? Should SC#4LB be held criminally responsible, arrested, and charged with inciting a "hate crime"?

Forbid it, Almighty God.

In the meantime, we are promised by Christ Himself that we are "blessed" when we are reviled and persecuted for righteousness' sake, when they say all kinds of evil against us falsely for His sake, and we are under His direct instruction to "rejoice and be exceedingly glad" when it happens.

It is in that spirit that we know that the time, energy, personal hostility, and intensity with which the Left attacks us is one of the surest measures of how effectively Sunlit Uplands is threatening their repressive agenda.

Along with our #1 ranking in South Carolina's blogosphere, that's cause for a lot of rejoicing.

And so we shall. And be exceedingly glad while we're at it.

Free Speech Concerns Ignored as "Hate Crimes" Bill Passes Fed. Judiciary Committee

From LifeSiteNews
By Kathleen Gilbert

A divided House Judiciary Committee yesterday voted to send a federal "hate crimes" bill to the House, after free speech advocates failed to secure protection for pastors who might preach biblically-based injunctions against homosexual activity.

In a motion almost completely ignored by the mainstream media, the Judiciary Committee voted 15-12 to allow the hotly contested H.R. 1913, known as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act of 2009, to go forward.

The measure would grant the federal government a new authority to prosecute any violent crime anywhere in the country that is perceived to be "motivated by prejudice" against a number of protected characteristics, including "sexual orientation" and "gender identity."

Christian leaders are particularly concerned that attempts to secure the right to speak against the homosexual lifestyle and its normalization have failed. Among many rejected proposals for the bill was one offered by Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, which would have included a clause ensuring ministers could not be prosecuted for abetting a "hate crime" because they preached the Christian perspective on homosexuality.

Read the rest of this entry >>

The Homosexuals' Tyrannical Agenda

After scores of municipalities, counties and states have overwhelmingly rejected the radical homosexual agenda, it is becoming clear that the movement is about much more than recognizing “gay marriage.”

The fascist attacks on Christians in San Francisco, Michigan and elsewhere demonstrates that they seek to silence free speech. The vehicle of choice is so called “hate crimes” legislation. Such “hate crimes” may involve preaching of the gospel, condemning sodomy from a pulpit, or writing a blog post or letter to the editor. Such legislation, recently passed in Colorado, may even prevent the publication and sale of the Bible in that state.

Canada and Europe give us a good view of where the homo-fascists would take America. In Canada a publisher, clergymen, or ordinary citizen can be hauled before the nation’s Human Rights Commissions to account for what they think and say. James Allan, a University of Queensland Professor of Law describes the situation as follows:

“Here is a little known fact about Canada. It is today a country where you can say or write things that are true and yet still be brought before a tribunal.

“That tribunal can fine you; it can order you to pay money to the people who complained about your words; it can force you to issue an apology; it can do all three.

“That’s not all though. The people who complained will not need to hire a lawyer.

“Their costs will be picked up by the state, by the taxpayers.

“You on the other hand, will have to hire a lawyer to defend yourself. And there will be no award of costs at the end, so that even if you win, you will still be out of pocket to your lawyers tens of thousands of dollars.

“Of course, you will not win.

“Why? Because in the entire history of these Canadian tribunals, hearing these cases, those people like you who have been hauled before these tribunals have never won - not one single time [on cases citing Section 13.1 of the Human Rights Act - the hate crimes provision].

“The complainants always win.”

Indeed, a Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has imposed a lifetime ban on a local Catholic’s freedom to publicly criticize homosexuality. He responded to the Court’s order as follows:

"This fine is for telling the truth [that] homosexual sodomites can change their behaviour and be set free from their sin and depravity through the forgiveness of sins and shed blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

The following video demonstrates how truly tyrannical the homosexualists are prepared to be should they ever have the power of law on their side: