Punishing the ‘thought’ behind the crime?

All crime committed against all innocent people is punishable according to the harm done to person and property and its violation of civil laws. Now, those laws are being re-written to punish crime against some people more than others.

Known as hate crimes legislation, H.R. 1913 passed the House last week, and President Obama vows to sign it if it makes it to his desk.

The fourteenth amendment to the constitution provides the same protections under the law as hate crimes laws do, so the bill is a bit of extraneous nonsense at best and an attempt to codify certain behaviors as more criminal than others.

Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel says “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,” April 22, 2009 Americans for Truth.

If passed, this legislation opens the door to insidious scenarios. Loss of free speech is only one of them.

Wrote [columnist Janet] Porter, “I’ve written extensively about how this bill would criminalize Christianity and turn those who disagree with the homosexual agenda into felons, but criminalizing Christianity is just the beginning of what this bill would do. It would also elevate pedophiles as a special protected class – since the term ‘sexual orientation’ which has been added to the ‘hate crimes’ legislation includes them in the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of various ‘sexual orientations.”

The term “Orwellian” is coming up a lot in commentary these days. This is that, and something even more sinister in the precedent it sets. Unfortunately, it’s no fiction.