June 26, 2007 3:58 PM
Snopes has it wrong on hate crime legislation
I've always relied on Snopes to check out whether something forwarded to me is true or not.
I will no longer be able to trust Snopes, though. Their liberal bias is showing.
Here's the scoop, beginning with an email I received last week from a reader:
Barbara,I received this email [on potential federal hate crime legislation] this morning and I was very disturbed by it. Outraged actually. If what the email says is true, I am ready to march on Congress.
I have made it a practice to check with snopes.com before I go all out in a fit. I don’t necessarily believe Snopes has cornered the market on truth, but if they have a drastically different view, then I start digging.
So here I am. I trust your judgment and your discernment skills. Here is the link to the Snopes article.
Jennifer
I know many people accuse the American Family Association of being over the top. That doesn't mean they are. They just have a strong point of view - a point of view that Christians can benefit from listening to and balancing against other input.
And that's coming from someone who was once taken to task in the pages of AFA - along with Frederica Mathewes-Green - for having anything positive to say about the Simpsons (see my article here. See the AFA critique here).
I also knew the AFA was probably right on the money on this issue because I lived in California during the beginning of the homosexual push for supernatural rights - including the push for indoctrination of public school students and - yes, indeed - hate crime legislation. In fact, where the two intersected, school employees were required to write up students who had anything "negative" to say about homosexuality and make it a permanent part of their records.
At the time, I was working for Focus on the Family as the California editor for Citizen magazine, so I did a lot of research into the implications of hate crime legislation. And yes, the eventual aim of the gay/lesbian lobby is to STOP all religious speech based on the biblical point of view that homosexuality is a sin (just as adultery is a sin - only adulterers don't accuse Christians of hate speech, they just go on about their business not caring what other people think). In fact, just because I've stated on my blog that I don't support same-sex marriage, I have been accused of hating gays. With this hate crime legislation in place, commentators like me could conceivably be charged with hate speech. And let's face it, no matter how well-reasoned or modulated a conservative's response, if a liberal doesn't like it, they call it hate speech.
In fact, "hate speech" is just a bogus issue - plain and simple.
So my immediate response to Jennifer's question was:
Jennifer -I am 99% sure AFA is right, so I guess Snopes - like google - does have liberal bias. I lived in California 8 years ago when hate crimes legislation was introduced so I'm pretty sure I'm right. But am researching it with some attorneys I know before I post it at my blog. Will let you know for sure.
barbara
So just to be sure, before going public, I contacted friends at the Alliance Defense Fund, a group of 1000 attorneys who provide pro bono services to protect our freedom of speech (a good resource to know about if your child is ever forbidden to read a Bible or draw a religious picture or his chorus teacher is forbidden to use sacred music to teach kids to sing).
They passed on these items:
Hate Crimes Legislation
Tyranny of the Mind
Oh, and I see that AFA has now issued a response to Snopes, which includes the following:
Can’t happen, you say? In Canada, one cannot legally criticize homosexuality in public. Because of a “hate crimes” law that includes sexual orientation, even the quoting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality can be illegal.Because of “hate crimes” legislation in Sweden, a pastor was sentenced to 30 days in jail for preaching a sermon in which he said homosexuality is wrong.
Read their detailed perspective here.
Posted in Current Affairs, Media Bias | Permalink
Comments
You may want to read the stories of hate crime victims before making up your mind. http://www.hatecrimesbill.org
Posted by: Hatecrimesbill.org | June 26, 2007 7:51 PM
I don't normally publish comments from drive-by snipers - people who aren't interested in the whole package here but just dropping by to "enlighten" us poor backward moms.
However, I'm publishing yours because the answer is so obvious.
Women and children are mutilated, raped, strangled, murdered, dismembered, drowned, etc every day in this country. Children are brutalized by pedophiles. Whites are tortured by blacks - and vice versa, although white on black crime has long been especially vicious (the media tends not to talk about crimes of other races as much as it does about white perps - can you imagine if the Virginia Tech mass murderer had been a white guy?)
My point? Crime is criven by hate, period. Why should some classes be more protected than others?
I'll tell you why - because it's part of an agenda by gay political activists to create sympathy and to make themselves a victim class.
And you make my point - the end result will be to eliminate so-called hate speech against gays so that we can shut up these stupid Christians with their backwards ideas. Typical leftist strategy - if you can't win in the arena of ideas, start calling the other side names and accusing them of "hate."
Do I sound outraged? Well, as a matter of fact, I am. I've lived through this stupidity in California and now I see it poised to enter the national arena.
I was a leftist until I was 38 years old. I've been a conservative for 21 years. I have never seen the hatred on the right that I saw on the left. There is absolutely no excuse for villifying people because they don't believe the same thing you do.
The whole concept of hate crimes is absolutely absurd and just a Trojan horse for the real agenda - which is to shut up the opposition.
Posted by: barbara | June 26, 2007 8:22 PM
Just wanted respond to the claim that in Canada it is illegal to say anything negative about homosexuals. This is actually false, and is also a common misunderstanding that I've seen mentioned before in American blogs. Canadians are protected under "freedom of religion" and are allowed to share their views on homosexuality. In fact, my local paper has recently run several letters to the editor that were clearly anti-homosexual and were quoting Scripture to support their arguments.
That said, the big fear here in the Christian community is that this protection could be removed.
Posted by: Amy | June 26, 2007 10:32 PM
What a coincidence. I was just reading an article about a German pastor being sentenced to a year in jail for comparing the Nazi Holocaust to abortion.
http://salemvoice.org/news188.html
Amy -- I wish I could find it, but a few years back I distinctly remember reading about a man who was convicted of a hate crime for running ads just like the ones you describe in a Canadian newspaper. Of course, you don't have to take my word for it, and I can't find it again.
Posted by: Michelle | June 27, 2007 8:56 PM
Oh, here it is.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31080
"The Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatchewan upheld a 2001 ruling by the province's human rights tribunal that fined a man for submitting a newspaper ad that included citations of four Bible verses that address homosexuality....
Under Saskatchewan's Human Rights Code, Hugh Owens of Regina, Saskatchewan, was found guilty along with the newspaper, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, of inciting hatred and was forced to pay damages of 1,500 Canadian dollars to each of the three homosexual men who filed the complaint."
Posted by: Michelle | June 27, 2007 8:59 PM
Barbara,
I'm going to have to side with you. Why label any crime a "hate crime" since by the fact that the crime was committed, there had to be some sort of ill-will.
Posted by: Kathryn | June 28, 2007 12:58 PM
