A Crime To Speak The Truth?

Dr. Robert Gagnon paints a frightening scenario if the Congress passes legislation making homosexuality a protected legal category:

The U.S. House of Representatives will be voting this week, possibly Thursday, on the passage of a “Hate Crimes” bill that seeks to make “sexual orientation” (i.e. homosexuality, bisexuality) and “gender identity” (i.e. cross-dressing, transsexuality) specially protected legal categories (HR 1592: the so-called “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act”).

At first glance one might ask, “Who could be against criminalizing group-hate?” The problem comes in the interpretation of “hate.” As regards the volatile issues of homosexuality and transgenderism, one person’s definition of love is defined by another as hate. If you believe that true love means loving homosexual and transsexual persons but not their error—as Augustine once said, “Love not in the person his error, but the person; for the person God made, the error the person himself made”—then it is important for you to know that this ‘Hate’ Crimes bill will legally treat your love as hate. This is not pluralism, tolerance, and diversity. It is oppression.

Since genuine intimidation and violence is already covered by the existing legal code, the ultimate purpose of such a bill can only be to intimidate those who speak out against the endorsement of homosexual practice and transsexualism. In the current political climate—obvious cases in point are repeated oppressions of any who dare speak against homosexual practice in Canada, England, and Scandinavia, to say nothing of sectors of the United States—one cannot assume that there is a common definition of what constitutes hate against homosexual and transsexual persons. Any public words against homosexual practice will be treated legally as words that incite others to violence and/or discrimination against homosexual persons, and thus subject to criminal prosecution.

All that you need to know about such a hate-speech bill can be summed up by the intense resistance on the part of Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee to any attempt to safeguard religious liberties (note that all 23 Democrats in the committee supported the Hate Crimes bill; all 17 Republicans opposed it). They refused to allow an amendment that stated: “Nothing in this section limits the religious freedom of any person or group under the Constitution.” The Traditional Values Coalition reports the following telling exchange:

Congressman Gohmert asked, “If a minister was giving a sermon, a Bible study or any kind of written or spoken message saying that homosexuality was a serious sin and a person in the congregation went out and committed a crime against a homosexual would the minister be charged with the crime of incitement?” . . .And finally Democrat Congressman Arthur Davis from Alabama spoke up and said, “Yes.” (“TVC Report from the Judiciary Committee Hearing on the ‘Hate Crimes’ Bill, H.R. 1592,” Apr. 25, 2007, online here)

You can read the full article and the list of possible results here.

UPDATE: Chuck Colson weighs in on the subject here.