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HATE CRIMES ALERT:FoxNews and the “gay” press are reporting that the Senate could vote today or tomorrow on “Hate Crimes” legislation. It reportedly will be attached to an innocuous bill, S. 1023, the Travel Promotion Act. Please call your U.S. Senators at 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121 (www.congress.org) and urge them not to pass “Hate Crimes” legislation, which would create unequal protection and federalize “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” (transsexual “rights”) in the law. After “hate crimes” laws invariably come “hate speech” laws (e.g., in Canada and Great Britain), so this bill represents a grave threat to our First Amendment liberties. Please forward this e-mail on to your network. — Peter LaBarbera, www.americansfortruth.com
CHICAGO, Ill. – Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is organizing a news conference Wednesday, June 17th at 11:00 AM, to highlight President Obama’s radical homosexual appointments and overall “gay” agenda:
Where: 29 South LaSalle Street, Suite 610, Chicago, IL When: Wednesday., June 17, 11:00 AM Who: Scheduled speakers:
A longtime pundit and supporter of the homosexual lifestyle choice has admitted online that the so-called “hate crimes” bill now pending in the U.S. Senate is totally unnecessary, according to a report.
“The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that – and Matthew Shepard’s murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time,” wrote Andrew Sullivan in his “Daily Dish” column.
“The real reason for the invention of hate crimes was a hard-left critique of conventional liberal justice and the emergence of special interest groups which need boutique legislation to raise funds for their large staffs and luxurious buildings,” he continued.
“Just imagine how many direct mail pieces have gone out explaining that without more money for [Human Rights Campaign], more gay human beings will be crucified on fences. It’s very, very powerful as a money-making tool – which may explain why the largely symbolic federal bill still hasn’t passed.”
Yesterday the U.S. House passed H.R. 1913 and elevated “actual or perceived” “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the same federal legal status as race. The vote was 249 to 175, with 10 not voting. You can see how your representative voted by checking the roll online.
Officially Preferred Victims: Liberty University law professor Shawn Akers writes that if H.R. 1913, the federal “Hate Crimes” bill, becomes law, “local and state law enforcement would have the incentive of federal funds to prosecute cases involving … preferred victims to the exclusion and neglect of less valuable victims.” Membership in the “preferred” category is “based not on immutable characteristics but on the class member’s choice of sexual conduct … and subjective gender self-identity.”
TAKE ACTION: Call or write your U.S. Representative and Senators in opposition to H.R. 1913, the “Hate Crimes” bill that will likely be voted on by the House tomorrow, Wednesday, April 28. Call 202-225-3121 or 202-224-3121 or contact your representatives through www.congress.org.
Editor’s Note: we delayed in making a change in copy desired by the author, in paragraph I.A. (“Characteristics”), giving the proper credit for a description of the Hate Crimes bill, HR 1913. That paragraph was corrected on May 1, 2009.
Following is an outstanding analysis of the federal “Hate Crimes” bill, HR 1913, which could be voted on by the House of Representatives tomorrow (Wednesday, April 29). Shawn Akers is a relative newcomer to the pro-family movement but is shaping up to be a future all-star. He serves as a Policy Analyst with Liberty Counsel, and as Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of Academic Support with Liberty University School of Law. Akers is a close friend, colleague and former Regent Law classmate of Matt Barber, AFTAH Board Member and current Culture War heavyweight also with Liberty Counsel. (Barber will keynote AFTAH’s fundraising banquet on Saturday, Oct. 10 — save the date.) Keep an eye on Shawn. The Lord will be using him mightily as the heated culture war reaches a boil. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, www.aftah.com.
TAKE ACTION: Call your U.S. Representative and Senators at 202-224-3121 and urge them to OPPOSE H.R. 1913, the federal “Thought Crimes” (“Hate Crimes”) bill, which is likely to be passed out of the House Judiciary Committee today. You can also find your representatives at www.congress.org.
“Passage of ‘hate crimes’ legislation would place the behaviorally driven and fluid concepts of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ on an equal footing with legitimate, neutral and immutable ‘suspect class’ characteristics such as skin color or a person’s true gender. This creates both a sociopolitical and legal environment wherein traditional sexual morality officially becomes the new racism.” — Matt Barber
Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) have quietly re-introduced the federal thought crimes bill, H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. As has proved to be true in both Europe and Canada, this Orwellian piece of legislation is the direct precursor to freedom killing and speech chilling “hate speech” laws. It represents a thinly veiled effort to ultimately silence – under penalty of law – morally, medically and biblically based opposition to the homosexual lifestyle. The bill is expected to be marked up Wednesday before the full House Judiciary Committee.
Under the 14th Amendment, victims of violent crime are currently afforded equal protection under the law regardless of sexual preference or proclivity. If passed, H.R. 1913 will change all that. It overtly and, most likely, unconstitutionally discriminates against millions of Americans by granting federally preferred status, time and resources to individuals who define their identity based upon aberrant sexual behaviors (i.e., “gay” and lesbian “sexual orientation” or cross-dressing “gender identity”).
Schwartz defends state action against “bible based bigotry against gays”
Bob Schwartz of the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network supports Wright State University’s ban against the Campus Bible Fellowship. The Christian campus group opposes Wright’s “nondiscrimination” code, which would force it to abandon its faithfulness to Scripture by allowing unrepentant homosexuals as members. Schwartz previously claimed to oppose laws criminalizing Christian speech — yet he favors banning groups because he considers them “bible bigots.” Would Schwartz and GLN (which AFTAH considers to be an anti-Christian hate group) allow a tax-supported public university to dictate ITS membership standards if it operated on a college campus?
AFTAH was copied on the following e-mail letter from Bob Schwartz of the left-wing Gay Liberation Network, based in Chicago, to Wright State University President David Hopkins. Schwartz sent his letter following Americans For Truth’s reprint of a press release by the Foundation for Individual Rights (FIRE) , which is fighting to overturn Wright State’s oppressive policy of forcing Campus Bible Fellowship to violate its faith creed in order to stay on campus. Note at bottom Schwartz’s clarification in response to a question from this writer.
Please study this series of e-mails and links [Wright State story HERE and Schwartz’s previous statement against censorship HERE] and see if you can comprehend how Schwartz can simultaneously hold two seemingly contradictory positions:
he “opposes” government censorship against Christian speech (for which AFTAH wrote that “we are pleasantly surprised that the GLN leader is not an outright advocate of censorship”);
while he supports a government-funded school banning a Christian group for, effectively, sticking to its Biblical faith creed.
“This kind of overheated rhetoric creates a climate where hate crimes can occur … We demand that The Family Policy Council of West Virginia apologize and take down this violent ad. This video is reckless, wrongheaded and irresponsible.” –Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out (TWO), a militant homosexual group, describing the alleged horrific effects of the West Virginia pro-marriage video [click Youtube video directly below] that used a target graphic to illustrate the point that homosexual activists are targeting traditional marriage for redefinition. See article by Laurie Higgins following the video:
Wayne Besen said this visual target graphic representing homosexual activists targeting traditional marriage — in a video produced by the Family Policy Council of West Virginia — turned the video into a “violent ad.” At bottom is an excerpt of the narration of the video surrounding the portion with the “target” graphic.
Wayne Besen, former spokesman for the subversive homosexual activist Human Rights Campaign and founder of the hate organization Truth Wins Out, apparently can’t make a distinction between a domestic terrorist threat and — a metaphor.
Besen has a West Virginia marriage initiative in his sights. He sees in this utterly benign video by The Family Policy Council of West Virginia a nefarious sniper threat. Please watch the video that has so terrorized Besen and that is more like an episode of The Waltons than 24: http://www.wvformarriage.com/ [Click on YouTube above to watch video.]
His claim is both idiotic and comical. In one frame of this video, we see the nuclear family through the sight of a gun, which is a commonplace metaphor that means that someone or something is taking aim at or opposing something. Is Besen actually claiming that society should prohibit the use of this metaphor? Will society tolerate this kind of intrusive censorship? And is Besen claiming that he and his collaborators don’t have traditional marriage and the natural family in their crosshairs?
Utah’s “Common Ground” package, Illinois “civil unions” bill would help courts impose “same-sex marriage”
“Recent court decisions in other states have similarly made clear that providing benefits to same-sex couples, no matter how minor and even if accompanied by statement of intent meant to protect marriage, will be treated as evidence that the legislature does not object to redefining marriage.
“In each of the State high court decisions mandating a redefinition of marriage (in Massachusetts, California and Connecticut), the majority opinions have pointed to the extension of benefits to same-sex couples in those States in support of its conclusion.[3] This was the case in Massachusetts even though the legislature had specified in one bill that “[n]othing in this act shall be construed so as to legitimize or validate a ‘homosexual marriage’, so-called.”— William Duncan, Marriage Law Foundation
TAKE ACTION: “Civil unions” and “domestic partner” bills are used by activist judges to legalize “same-sex marriage,” as Bill Duncan of the Marriage Law Foundation shows below. Such bills are being considered in several states. “Sexual orientation/Gender Identity” bills create the foundation for artificial, homosexuality-based “rights,” culminating in homosexual “marriage.” A “civil unions” bill just advanced in Illinois, and several pro-homosexual bills will be considered soon in Florida. Take action in the following states (this list is not comprehensive):
