Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) - Assaulting people because of their sexual orientation would become a federal hate crime in legislation the House is set to vote on Thursday. The bill would significantly expand the hate crimes law enacted in the days after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. With the expected House passage and eventual approval by the Senate, federal prosecutors will for the first time be able to intervene in cases of violence perpetrated against gays based on their sexual orientation.

The GOP added a death penalty clause to the Matthew Shepard Act in hopes that a debate over capital punishment would derail the legislation.The Senate has joined the House in expanding the definition of "hate crimes" to include attacks on gays and lesbians. In doing so, however, it attached an amendment that would make some hate crimes punishable by death. Democratic congressional leaders should insist that the provision be removed. Also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, the legislation empowers the Justice Department to assist states and localities with the investigation and prosecution of crimes motivated by the victim's sexual...

Federal lawsuit claims Eastern Michigan University dismissed grad student from counseling program for her views on homosexuality by Amanda Hamon | The Ann Arbor News Monday April 06, 2009, 9:49 AM A national legal group has filed a lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University on behalf of a graduate student who allegedly was dismissed from a counseling program because of her beliefs about homosexuality.The complaint was filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Detroit, according to a federal database of lawsuits.The Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom says student Julea Ward was dismissed from her graduate program in March...

Senate Democrats achieved one of their longtime goals this month -- an ex pansion of federal "hate crime" law. Tacked on as an amendment to the defense-appropriations bill, the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Prevention Act -- named after a gay man murdered in Wyoming in 1998 -- includes essentially the same legislative language that Sen. Edward Kennedy has long pushed. It expands federal hate-crime protection to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. Now, it's easy to think hate-crime laws are harmless. After all, why not outlaw "hate" for one group or another? One problem, of course, is that laws...

I’ll grant supporters of hate crimes legislation one thing: they certainly understand the tactical advantage of being hateful when accusing others of hate. This weekend, after the Senate passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Bill, I posted several articles on Facebook and my blog questioning the claim that Matthew Shepard was murdered solely because he was gay. Although the media and gay rights activists treat it as conventional wisdom, this claim has always been in dispute. Shepard’s murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, admitted from the start that they were on a drug binge at the time of the...

Legislation long sought by Democrats that would expand federal hate-crime laws to cover gay and transgendered people has won approval in the Senate, raising expectations among supporters that the time has finally come for it to be enacted...The legislation, named the Matthew Shepard Act after the gay University of Wyoming student beaten to death in 1998, would impose longer prison sentences for offenses motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. It also would make it easier for federal prosecutors to pursue hate-crime charges when local authorities do not.... The Senate approved the expanded hate-crime bill by voice vote...

The United States Senate approved an amendment yesterday adding "hate crimes" legislation to the annual Defense Authorization bill, which would add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the list of federally-protected classes. The Senate voted 63 - 28 to attach S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (MSHCPA), to the $680 billion defense bill meant to support US troops fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada favored attaching the hotly-debated bill as an amendment, instead of putting it forward as a stand-alone bill, in hopes of easing its passage, but his tactic...

The Senate on Thursday approved the most sweeping expansion of federal hate crimes law since Congress responded four decades ago to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The legislation, backed by President Barack Obama, would extend federal protections granted under the 1968 hate crimes law to cover those physically attacked because of their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. "This bill simply recognizes that there is a difference between assaulting someone to steal his money, or doing so because he is gay, or disabled, or Latino or Muslim," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. Voice vote passage came...

Senate Democrats announced on Monday that the Senate would consider a homosexual "hate crimes" proposal as an attached amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, and will likely vote on the bill tomorrow. In addition to adding "sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability" to the list of federally-protected classes, S.909, also known as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also expands the reach of hate crimes law by eliminating the restriction that such crimes disrupt federally protected activities. Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Monday he would introduce S.909 as a bipartisan amendment to the defense authorization...

In high school, music was Bill Zircher’s thing, mostly drums. He studied electrical engineering in college. In 1994 he married a woman he met in a band. The couple had a daughter, and Zircher was thrilled to be a father. Dana Zircher still plays the drums, is still a self-described high-tech nerd, and still a parent. She still works as a software design engineer for Microsoft in Beverly, though she now uses the ladies’ room instead of the men’s. As part of an aggressive grass-roots campaign, Zircher will testify today at a State House hearing in favor of civil rights...

Last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings (video at the link) on the proposed federal hate crimes bill showed the dark underbelly of the Senate. The road to undermining the rule of law is being paved with the best of intentions and casual disregard (if not outright hostility) for the principles of limited government and equality under the law. I raise some objections to the bill in this podcast: The bill federalizes violent acts against victims by reason of their actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Never mind that these acts are...

"We're not going to win this case, but that's okay. Once we get 'hate crime' laws on the books, we're going to go after the Scouts and all the other bigots." This was a remark made in the gallery by the Clinton White House liaison for "gay" issues during U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the Boy Scouts case in 2000. She had whispered it to the Rev. Rob Schenck, whom she mistakenly thought was one of those liberal clerics who think God is still making up His mind about sexual morality. The point is that the proposed federal "hate crime"...

Dear UNC-Wilmington Students: It’s getting close to time to start another semester. That means that it’s time to lay down the rules for all of my classes. I’m going to continue to use all the rules I’ve used before, which can be found in my syllabus. But, starting this semester, I’m adding three more rules. Gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered students (GILBERTS) need to pay especially close attention. First of all, GILBERTS will not be allowed to mention their status as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or trans-gendered. A few semesters ago, a gay student in one of my classes said –...

Why a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity “Hate Crimes” Law Is Bad for You Part 3: Inroads against personal freedom already made in the United States by homosexual and transsexual political activismby Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D. June 18, 2009  To print a clean copy with proper formatting and pagination go to the pdf version here.  Many proponents of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” legislation contend that “sexual orientation” legislation will not endanger civil liberties in the United States—in Europe, Canada, and Brazil, but not in the United States. The evidence to date suggests otherwise. An example of hate-speech prosecution in Philadelphia In Part 2...

MEDIA ADVISORY, June 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- This week, a letter is being hand-delivered to every member of the United States Senate imploring conservatives to join Senator Jim DeMint's filibuster of the pending Hate Crimes bill, which would criminalize preaching the Gospel and put preachers in the crosshairs. The letter explains that, in its current form, the Hate Crimes legislation would: "Silence the moral voice of the Church" -- "Punish principled dissent from the homosexual agenda" -- "Be a savage and perhaps fatal blow to First Amendment freedom of expression" -- and "Empower the left and encourage it to move...

At a family picnic tonight, I heard a story so unsettling and unreal, that I thought it was a joke until confirmed otherwise. A number of weeks ago, my uncle through marriage took it upon himself in a public place (a local convenience store) to criticize the policies of Barack Obama which was heard by a few patrons. A little background on my relation: he is a burly man with a creative tongue who, when speaking makes clear his opinions to everyone around him, but does so more to steam and vent than to do 'anything' about it. On this...

Write or call your two Senators and urge a NO vote on so-called hate crime legislation. The Democrat-controlled House just passed H.R. 1913, a so-called hate crimes bill that makes “sexual orientation,” “gender,” and “gender identity” into federally-protected classes under the law. The Senate version is S. 909, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. It must be defeated. This legislation begins to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute and persecute pastors, youth pastors, Bible teachers, and anyone else whose Bible speech and thought is based upon and reflects the truths found in the Bible. A...

... But this Memorial Day weekend he is calling ministers to fight for those freedoms – from their pulpits. "Pastors, if you wonder who is to blame for America's slide from the 'Ozzie and Harriet' morality of yesteryear to the 'Brokeback Mountain' immorality of today, look in the mirror," said Pastor Paul Blair of Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla. Blair is founder of a group called Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, an outreach to pastors that encourages church leaders to take a stand against the spread of immorality in American culture. He is urging pastors across the nation to stop...

LEGISLATION pending before Congress would dramatically expand the federal hate-crimes law, and a number of critics are concerned that the bill goes too far. Perhaps the real problem is that it doesn't go far enough. Under current law, crimes motivated by bias against a victim's race, color, religion, or national origin can be prosecuted by the federal government, so long as the victim had been engaged in a "federally-protected activity" - attending a public school, for example, or being in a place of public accommodation or entertainment. The proposed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which passed the House last...

It’s rare that a movie produced by Discovery and BBC Films about the natural world doesn’t contain any mention of molecules-to-man evolution or millions of years of history. In fact, it’s almost as if the production companies are joined at the hip with the false view of history, taking every opportunity to promote the idea that the earth is not a product of God’s handiwork. And yet, with the movie Earth (a trimmed-down version of the documentary series Planet Earth), they demonstrate it can be done. As far as I could tell, there was no mention of “evolution” or “millions...