Hate Crimes Bill Being Fought By Religious Right

One would think that passing legislation that provides equal protection under the law from persecution would be a good thing to everyone. Originally, hate-crime law was introduced to heavily penalize criminals that attacked their victims based on race, ethnicity or religion. Nowadays, one in six hate crimes are against the victim's sexual orientation and there is nothing in the current law to protect them. So Congress has finally brought legislation with a clear shot at passing as opposed to years prior when the Republican leadership would abandon the bill. Why would they do that? Because of their religious wingnut friends.

From The Huffington Post:

Predictably, anti-gay extremist organizations are at it again. Marking a new low in politics, these groups have embraced the work of a known white supremacist filmmaker, callously invoked the Virginia Tech massacre, blatantly lied about the Congressional record and even used the name and image of Jesus Christ in vain -- all in order to block passage of a bill that does nothing but provide equal protection under the law for every American.

In an action alert to members nationwide, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, incredibly used the memory of the Virginia Tech massacre to rally his troops against the hate crimes bill, stating that its passage would provide "a homosexual would have more federal protection under the law than the 32 victims of last week's massacre."

The Traditional Values Coalition created and disseminated a fake transcript of last week's House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Hate Crimes bill to "prove" that the legislation would punish anti-gay thoughts. The falsified transcript doesn't even remotely resemble the official transcript of the proceeding. They even produced a "wanted poster" in which Jesus Christ, wearing a crown of thorns, is wanted for violating the proposed hate crimes bill. The poster states that Christ is "wanted for revealing the truth about homosexuality in 'The Bible' and encouraging his followers not to offend God by committing such behavior." Is abusing the image of Christ in order to divide and discriminate really the Christian way?

And that my friends is the insanity we have to deal with. These creatures of 'morality' are full of anger and hate for another group of god's children. They would rather see people be beaten and killed than love them as another human being. What kind of church would teach that crap?

Scumbags like Tony Perkins and James Dobson are absolutely revolting. For Perkins to use the death of the students at Virginia Tech is beyond belief. These religious wackos will stop at nothing to keep up their followers fear and hatred for the massive amount of humanity out there that does not look, talk or fuck like they do. Of course, I expect this from people like Perkins and Dobson, I did not however from members of the black clergy. How incredibly hypocritical can one be?

Be sure to counter-act these groups and write your Congressman today to have them support H.R. 1592.