New 'hate speech' attack targets Internet

wnd.com

Barack Obama, when he was new in the Oval Office, signed a “hate crimes” law that created a two-tier system of punishment, increasing the punishment for a Christian pastor who attacked a homosexual but not for a homosexual who attacked a Christian pastor.

The reasoning was simple. The homosexual is in a protected class of U.S. citizens, but the Christian pastor is not.

The next step in that agenda now is being proposed by a Democrat in Congress, who said he wants a report submitted that investigates how technology is used to advance “commission of crimes of hate.”

The original law, called the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, was signed by Obama when Democrats strategically attached it to a “must-pass” $680 billion defense-appropriations bill in 2009.

The law cracks down on any acts that could be linked to criticism of homosexuality or even the “perception” of homosexuality. Obama boasted of his accomplishment.

“After more than a decade, we’ve passed inclusive hate-crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray or who they are,” he said.

But the criticism was vocal and pointed. American Family Association President Tim Wildmon warned the new law “creates a kind of caste system in law enforcement, where the perverse thing is that people who engage in nonnormative sexual behavior will have more legal protection than heterosexuals. This kind of inequality before the law is simply un-American.”

He pointed out that the legislation also creates possible situations in which pastors could be arrested if their sermons on sexuality can be linked in even the remotest way to acts of violence. For example, if someone hears the biblical description of homosexuality as a sin and uses that message as a reason for acting.

The Alliance Defending Freedom also blasted the “hate-crimes” bill, calling it “another nail in the coffin of the First Amendment.”

“All violent crimes are hate crimes, and all crime victims deserve equal justice,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley said in a statement. “This law is a grave threat to the First Amendment because it provides special penalties based on what people think, feel or believe.”

Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, testified before Congress against the hate-crimes bill.

“It is fundamentally unjust for the government to treat some crime victims more favorably than others, just because they are homosexual or transsexual,” Dacus said. “This bill is an unnecessary federal intrusion into state law-enforcement authority, and it is an unwise step toward silencing religious and moral viewpoints.”

Now Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is calling for a specific review of how such “hate speech” finds its way onto the Internet, television and radio.

The goal, he said, is to “better address such crimes.”

His plan would create “an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes.”

Markey, of the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he wants to know “the current prevalence of hate crimes and hate speech in telecommunications.”

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