From: Travis
-
From: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, May 7, 2009
Subject: Viper's Desk: Please read about Bill - H.R. 1913 and then sign the
Petition
*Where will you draw the line in the sand?*
**
Are there any laws you would defy, because obeying them would require a
betrayal of conscience and surrender of spirit you are not willing to make?
Are there laws you would be willing to actively resist? To what extent?
**
*Please read about Bill - H.R. 1913 and then sign the Petition*
**
*Our Freedom is at stake here*
**
1055 Maitland Center Cmns.
Second Floor
Maitland, Florida 32751
Tel: 800•671•1776
Fax: 407•875•0770
www.LC.org <http://www.lc.org/>
**
100 Mountain View Road
Suite 2775
Lynchburg, Virginia 24502
Tel: 434•592•7000
Fax: 434•592•7700
[email protected]
**
1015 Fifteenth St. N.W.
Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20005
Telephone: 202•289•1776
Facsimile: 202•216•9656
*The “Hate Crimes” Bill*
*H.R. 1913**, the "Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009"
*
By: Shawn D.
Akers[1]<http://www.libertyaction.org/292/MemoHateCrimesAkers050509.htm#_ftn1>
*I. Characteristics*
A. “ This bill* would create a federal offense imposing federal criminal
penalties* – potentially *in addition to criminal penalties imposed under
state law”* – on any defendant who chooses his victim in whole or in part
because of the victim’s “actual or perceived race, color, religion, or
national origin” or *“actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender,
sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.”* “Violations would be
punishable by *criminal fines and imprisonment of up to 10 years, or
imprisonment for life* if the offense results in death or ‘includes
kidnapping [sic] or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an
attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or *an attempt to kill*.’” *See
Legislation Detail *
http://www.overcriminalized.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?id=441*.*
B. The bill includes the terms “*Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Gender
Identity”* – *ambiguous terms that the drafters of the bill have refused to
define*. It places those descriptions on par with race, color, religion and
nationality.
C. As a matter of mechanics, the bill provides financial grants to state
and local entities, provides additional personnel for investigation and
prosecution, creates new federal criminal offenses, and creates a new
evidentiary rule (no evidence of speech or associations is admissible to
prove motive of defendant unless the speech or association is “specifically
related” to the “hate crime”).
D. The bill is couched in terms of providing assistance to state, local,
and Indian governments but it reserves the right to act if they fail to
exercise their jurisdiction, or leave “demonstrably un-vindicated the
federal interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence.”
*II. Status*
A. The version of the bill titled HR 1913 RH passed out of Judiciary
Committee on a 15-12 vote. It appears that the only change from the prior
version, HR 1913 IH, was the dropping of the original section 2 – the
findings section which included exaggerated figures of so-called hate crimes
and included the interstate commerce language.
B. At committee markup, Steve King, Bob Goodlatte, and others offered
and argued persuasively for several amendments all of which were defeated.
One that was particularly interesting was Steve King’s amendment to merely
exclude pedophiles from the protected class based on “sexual orientation” –
it was voted down 13-10.
C. HR 1913 RH went to the floor, and the House adopted the bill on a
249-175 vote. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll223.xml
D. A companion bill, S.909, has now been introduced into Senate.
*III. Major Concerns*
**
While the bill’s supporters have very effectively framed the bill as one
that will protect victims from criminal acts, the bill actually has very
little to do with protection. Indeed, if the bill’s drafters and supporters
are to be believed, the bill only becomes relevant after a criminal has
committed an already illegal act. On closer analysis, the bill does not
merely provide stiffer penalties for certain crimes but, rather, represents
a substantive and fundamental shift away from the American ideas of free
speech and God given immutable equality and toward the European ideas of
state approved speech, state endorsed morality, state-given egality. The
particular concerns with the bill are numerous, but a few of the most
troublesome are listed below.
*A. Unequal Protection of Laws Under 14th Amendment*
**
1. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution requires that all citizens
be extended equal protection under the law. HR 1913 in effect creates two
classes of victims, i.e. those who are a member of the preferred and
protected class created by the bill and those who are not. Inclusion in the
preferred class is to a great extent based not on immutable characteristics
but on the class member’s choice of sexual conduct, subjective gender, and
subjective gender self-identity. For further discussion, see the excellent
article *Separate But Unequal Protection*, by Matt Barber. (
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=498106).
2. The practical effect of the carrot and the stick of federal funds,
federal promotion, and federal oversight, is the promotion of the preferred
class and the neglect of non-class members. Specifically, local and state
law enforcement would have the incentive of federal funds to prosecute cases
involving these preferred victims to the exclusion and neglect of less
valuable victims. Additionally, with federal funds available when the
requisite “hate” connection can be alleged, the bill creates a powerful
incentive to force cases into the “hate crimes” mold. This heavily
incentivized increase in reported “hate crimes” would artificially inflate
the number and apparent prevalence of so called “hate crimes.” The natural
and very political result of such a perceived increase in “hate crimes”
would undoubtedly be an increase in the political influence of the preferred
class, and as night follows day, a corresponding increase and expansion of
even more intrusive “hate crime” and “hate speech” legislation to address
the perceived crisis.
B. *Punishes Thought (Potentially Religious or Political Thought) Rather
than Mere Intent To Commit a Crime*.
1. Ironically hate is not even an element of a “hate crime” in the
bill. Rather, the definition of a “hate crime” is borrowed from the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 – requiring only that the
defendant selects a victim because of the membership or perceived membership
in one of these proposed protected classes. Proponents of the bill argue
that the criminal is being punished for his or her intent to terrorize an
entire class of people (i.e. all homosexuals) but no such intent to
terrorize is actually required. Indeed, despite the framing of the term
“hate crime,” the bill does not even require a showing of animus toward the
victim or the preferred class. Under existing law, the criminal would be
punished if he or she possessed the requisite *intent to commit the act*.
The additional criminal fines and prison sentences that would be created by
HR 1913 are based not on whether the defendant intended to commit the act
but on whether the defendant considered the victim’s membership in the
preferred class in choosing the victim. In other words, because penalties
already exist for those who commit criminal acts, HR 1913 serves only to
punish individuals for the beliefs, opinions, or convictions held at the
time an act is committed. As such, HR 1913 does not punish criminal intent,
but criminalizes thought.
C. *Wider Im**media**te Application Than Claimed*: This bill will
certainly be construed in light of existing federal law including
specifically United States Code Title 18, Section 2 that says: “Whoever
commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels,
commands, *induces* or procures its commission, is punishable as a
principal.” (emphasis added). This is the feared immediate nexus between
the speech of a pastor or radio commentator and the actions of a deranged
parishioner or listener. Proponents of the bill argue that it clearly,
under its own language, applies only to acts of violence. This argument is
misleading and naïve in that it implies that criminal liability would be
available only for the person physically committing the violent act, while
ignoring completely the likelihood that courts, especially ideologically
driven, activist courts, will impose criminal liability on those deemed
complicit in the violent act whether or not they physically contributed to
the act.
D. *Federal Power Grab* – The bill, if passed into law, would as a
practical matter federalize virtually every sexual crime in the United
States. This federalization would occur even in the absence of any evidence
of failure by states and municipalities to prosecute. Under the bill,
membership in one of the preferred classes does not have to be the impetus
for the criminal act but merely a factor in the defendant’s selection of his
victim. This is almost always the case. Muggers invariably choose little
old ladies as victims precisely because they are little old ladies and
unlikely to be able to fend them off. Under the bill, consideration of the
gender of the victim effectively creates the potential for federal
jurisdiction. Considering both the extreme breadth of the bill and the
built-in incentives to bring crimes under the bill, the likely result is the
practical federalization of large swaths of state and local criminal law.
E. *Trend of Nationalization of State and Local Law and the
Internationalization of Federal Law; And a Corresponding Rise in
Anti-Semitic and Anti-Christian activity.*
**
1. The recent report by the Department of Homeland Security widely
increased the number of people who may be classified as “extremists” or
potential terrorists and who almost by definition would be members of hate
groups. Under the HR 1913, the speech of a criminal defendant and the mere
membership of the defendant in a given group may be used as evidence of his
or her biased motive so long as a prosecutor can show that the speech or
association was “specifically related” to the criminal act.
2. Substance and methods similar to that offered in the DHS report
have recently been echoed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That group
provides influential lists of hate groups relied upon by state and federal
law enforcement. The reports have begun to blend among its lengthy list of
true hate-based groups such as neo-Nazi groups and the Ku Klux Klan, other
organizations based on little more than their opposition to homosexuality.
The effect of listing a pro-family organization along side several neo-Nazi
groups is to create guilt by the artificial manufactured appearance of
association.
3. Additionally the appointment of Harold Koh and the rise of
acceptability of his stance that international laws should be used to
interpret American laws, even among such figures as certain United States
Supreme Court Justices, creates the danger and likelihood that judicial
activism would further increase the power, reach, and tyrannical effect of
HR 1913 by bringing its application in line with its counterparts in Canada,
the Netherlands, Brazil, etc.
4. Proponents of HR 1913 argue or imply that the law would provide
greater protection for members of all faiths, presumably including Judaism
and Christianity. The application of hate crimes laws in the countries in
which they are most prevalent (and the countries Harold Koh would likely
look to for interpretive guidance), produce exactly the opposite result.
The application of hate crimes laws in countries experiencing the increased
influence of Shariah, (Islamic religious law) such as the Netherlands, is
patently and consistently anti-Semitic. The most concrete example of this
is the stark contrast in the Netherlands of the application of hate crimes
laws to those who criticize Shariah and those who call for violence against
Israel and the Jewish people. For instance Geert Wilders who produced *
Fitna* a 17 minute film critical of Shariah is being vigorously prosecuted
under the Netherlands’ hate crimes laws. At the same time, the blatant and
violent anti-Semitism of others such as Dutch MP Harry van Bommel who called
for intifada against Israel earlier this year and Doekle Terpstra who
sponsored an “Olive Tree Campaign” rally in Amsterdam where the participants
chanted “Hamas, Hamas Jews to the Gas!” are apparently immune from hate
crimes laws.
5. The same is likely true of the UN Anti-Blasphemy measures which
realistically can be seen only to forbid criticism of Shariah while allowing
wholesale anti-Semitism.
6. Christians who vocally oppose homosexuality and the state
endorsement of homosexuality in Holland, Canada, and Brazil routinely
receive similar treatment, finding themselves on the prosecuted and
persecuted end of hate crimes legislation while the anti-Christian actions
of other groups are ignored.
7. Historically an increase in Shariah influence and/or a rise in
economic problems have consistently shown a corresponding rise in
anti-Semitism. The growing national and international acceptance and
preferential treatment of the pro-homosexual movement has likewise shown a
similar increase in anti-Christian activity (such as the threats of violence
against Proposition 8 supporters in California and the recent attack
launched by homosexual activist Perez Hilton against a contestant in the
Miss USA competition). Were the United States, under the leadership of
Harold Koh, Janet Napolitano, etc., to follow the hate crimes trends and
precedents established in the international community, the actual
application of HR 1913 and its inevitable hate crimes and hate speech
progeny is likely to be to the detriment of Christian and Jewish citizens.
F. *Incremental Move Toward Making Speech a federal crime*.
1. All of the above can reasonably be expected to lead to a quickly
spawned progeny of hate crime legislation demanding greater and greater
control of thought, expression and association. This is the pattern in the
international community. HR 1913 would firmly brand one’s thoughts on the
issues of human sexuality as potentially criminal activity. The logical next
step is to recognize the “harmful impact of hateful speech” on preferred
classes and to begin outlawing speech that would communicate what members of
preferred classes find offensive. Proponents of HR 1913 have argued that
this is preposterous but tellingly, in the April 23, 2009 Judiciary
Committee hearings on HR 1913, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) said
unequivocally that “We need to protect victims *against hateful words*,
hateful acts and even violent acts.” (emphasis added).
*IV. Action*
1. Encourage constituents to participate in immediate, continued, and
persistent contact with both personal senators and congressmen and those of
other districts and states.
2. Support, promote and demand a filibuster if the measure reaches the
floor of the Senate.
3. Record and hold to account every member supporting the bill in the
coming elections.
4. Actively oppose the confirmation of Harold Koh.
5. Vigorously hold Janet Napolitano responsible for the libelous
report issued by the DHS, and support the efforts of those calling for the
resignation of Janet Napolitano.
------------------------------
[1]<http://www.libertyaction.org/292/MemoHateCrimesAkers050509.htm#_ftnref1>
Shawn
D. Akers is a Policy Analyst with Liberty Counsel, and an Adjunct Professor
of Law and Director of Academic Support with Liberty University School of
Law. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
Click Below to Sign the Petition
Defend The Rights Of People Of
Faith!<http://www.libertyaction.org/292/petition.asp?Ref_ID=2463&PID=20854334&P=1>
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