The Right's Wrong Thinking: Gays and hate crimes
Human rights should apply
The religious right is at it again. The Senate approved a bill that would expand current hate crime legislation to include homosexuals. Though the bill narrowly focuses on violent crimes and has nothing to do with free speech, here is what some conservatives are saying: "This is the first time you would have written into law a government disapproval of a religious belief held by the majority of Americans—that homosexuality is sinful," says Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "It's more of a slippery slope argument than about the law itself."
"When you have pastors being called to testify about what they taught or preached to a person convicted of a hate crime, that's going to send a shock wave through the religious community," says Stanley. "It will lead to a chill on speech and free exercise of religion as it relates to homosexual behavior."
How do these modern day prophets divine this information? They do so by not reading the legislation. If they had read, they would have known that the bill is focused on hate crimes. This legislation has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It has to do with the safety of other humans.
You are, also, able to believe whatever you want about homosexuality. You can believe it is a sin. You can believe that all homosexuals are evil. However, what you are not allowed to do is to beat, harass, or kill another Human Being based on their sexual preference. No one is disapproving of your religious belief Mr. Stanley, instead what they are saying is that you do not have a right, based on those beliefs to harm another human being.
Finally, as a matter of common sense, if you stop preaching hate from your pulpits, then maybe you will not have to worry about whether one of your parishioners commits a hate crime.
Discrimination in any form is wrong. People ask me why am I so passionate about this? I tell them that it is not because it is my sexual preference, but because every man, woman and child deserve to be treated with respect.
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