{"id":1214,"date":"2007-05-03T22:21:26","date_gmt":"2007-05-04T03:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/05\/03\/1214\/"},"modified":"2007-05-03T22:52:35","modified_gmt":"2007-05-04T03:52:35","slug":"1214","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/05\/03\/1214\/","title":{"rendered":"may I rant?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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House passes bill to add attacks on gays to hate crime law
White House threatens veto<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n

WASHINGTON – The House voted Thursday to expand federal hate crime categories to include violent attacks against gays and people targeted because of gender, acting just hours after the White House threatened a veto. <\/p>\n

The legislation, passed 237-180, also would make it easier for federal law enforcement to take part in or assist local prosecutions involving bias-motivated attacks. Similar legislation is also moving through the Senate, setting the stage for a possible veto showdown with President Bush.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I can’t really understand this part of the Republican Party except as a way of maintaining an alliance with the sickest version of the Religious Right – something of a political trick – like the faith based initiatives. And I don’t have much to say about that that hasn’t been said. The reason I’m posting it is this paragraph:<\/div>\n
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The vote came after fierce lobbying from opposite sides by civil rights groups, who have been pushing for years for added protections against hate crimes, and social conservatives, who say the bill threatens the right to express moral opposition to homosexuality<\/strong> and singles out groups of citizens for special protection.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Concretely, that argument makes no sense. We have a perfect template already. It’s okay to be a racist. You can talk racist if you want. You can have a racist web site. But as soon as you start advocating violence based on that racism, you’re in trouble. And hate crimes themselves carry a heavy penalty. But you can say what you want. If the hateful brand of Christian social conservatives want to preach the Ted Haggard Sermon, "It’s in the Bible!" about homosexuals, they can do that. But they shouldn’t be able to foment hatred, or discrimination, and such hate crimes should be dealt with in a definitive way. We all know why. Some of us – like Southerners – know better because hate crimes were so common in our lifetime.<\/div>\n

But expressing moral opposition is not what they’re even arguing here. If they were out to express moral opposition to something, they’d be preaching sermons against murder, or robbery, things that are clearly Biblical sins, rather than something they have to comb Leviticus to even find a reference to. Or they would be preaching sermons against sins that their own believers might commit, like adultery. No homosexual person in their right mind would go to one of these crazy churches. These Christian social conservatives are arguing for the right to defame and demonmize a group of other people, to perpetuate their prejudice, and they’re asking that the law of the country actually support it. They can moralize all they want, but that’s not enough. They want to legislate this morality. In their view, their right to promulgate prejudice trumps the homosexual’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a society intolerant of Hate Crimes. <\/p>\n

And President Bush is going to veto legislation to give them what they want so they’ll vote for Republicans? This is not Conservativism. It’s institutionalized bigotry and electioneering. We "single out groups of citizens for special protection" against the people who "single out groups of citizens for special prejudice." They’ve become the very Roman crowds that used to throw the Christians<\/u> to the lions…<\/p>\n

[TRex on Firdoglake offers another version<\/strong><\/a>] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House passes bill to add attacks on gays to hate crime law White House threatens veto WASHINGTON – The House voted Thursday to expand federal hate crime categories to include violent attacks against gays and people targeted because of gender, acting just hours after the White House threatened a veto. The legislation, passed 237-180, also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}