October 23, 2009
Speaking of backdoors…new protected classes for hate crime legislation passed
What does our national defense and hate crimes legislation have to do with each other? Well, Reid knew the only way to pass this failed hate crimes legislation was to tack it on a defense bill:
The Senate passed groundbreaking legislation Thursday that would make it a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.
The expanded federal hate crimes law now goes to President Obama’s desk. Obama has pledged to sign the measure, which was added to a $680 billion defense authorization bill.
President George W. Bush had threatened to veto a similar measure.
The bill is named for Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming teenager who died after being kidnapped and severely beaten in October 1998, and James Byrd Jr., an African-American man dragged to death in Texas the same year.
“Knowing that the president will sign it, unlike his predecessor, has made all the hard work this year to pass it worthwhile,” said Judy Shepard, board president of the Matthew Shepard Foundation named for her son. “Hate crimes continue to affect far too many Americans who are simply trying to live their lives honestly, and they need to know that their government will protect them from violence, and provide appropriate justice for victims and their families.”
Judy Shepard makes me sick. What is it with these mothers who use their child’s death as an opportunity for fame and fortune? Oh, I know, that’s not what this is about for her. Yeah right! She knows the truth about the motives of her son’s killers. Surprise! It wasn’t his sexual orientation. Her son was killed for money by a man hire on drugs looking to buy more drugs. I reported on this back in July:
Look, I get it. I feel bad for this woman and her family. I cannot imagine what it was like to suffer through that tragedy. But, we cannot continue to perpetrate the lie that his death was a result of his sexual orientation. As Newsbusters.com reported:
But, on the November 26, 2004, 20/20, ABC host Elizabeth Vargas ran a report in which a number of figures tied to the case, including the prosecutor, were interviewed, and made a credible case that Shepard was targeted by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson not because of anti-gay sentiment, but because McKinney was high on methamphetamines, giving him unusual violent tendencies as well as a desire for cash to buy more drugs. Vargas not only found that a meth high can lead to the kind of extreme violence perpetrated against Shepard, but that McKinney had gone on to similarly attack another man, causing a skull fracture, very soon after his attack on Shepard. Additionally, McKinney’s girlfriend and another friend of McKinney’s even claimed that McKinney himself has bisexual tendencies, although McKinney himself denied it.
Vargas appeared on the November 19, 2004, The O’Reilly Factor on FNC and summarized her findings:
The prosecutor who prosecuted these crimes says that he never believed it was a hate crime. He believes it was a drug crime. Aaron McKinney, according to Aaron McKinney himself and to several other witnesses, was coming down from a five-day methamphetamine binge. He freely admits he not only used methamphetamine but dealt them, sold them. Five days up with no sleep, strung out on drugs, desperate to buy more, desperate to rob somebody to get money to buy more drugs. This was the motive, according to Aaron McKinney and the other witnesses.
This legislation is inherently against the principles and ideals that our country was founded on. It cannot be tolerated and it cannot be passed. Matthew Shepard did not die because he was gay and even if he did this legislation would have changed nothing. The people responsible for his death were sentenced to the maximum. Hate-crimes legislation would not have stopped McKinney, in a drug induced rage, from murdering Shepard.
Both McKinney and his accomplice Russell A. Henderson received two consecutive life sentences (avoiding the death penalty at the request of Judy and Dennis Shepard) for the murder. What more could hate-crimes legislation do? It would have neither prevented this crime, nor made the punishment any worse. So, what’s the point?
The point is that this isn’t about hate-crimes. This is about silencing people who oppose homosexuality (or bisexuality, or transgenderism) based on moral or religious grounds. The point of this is to codify political correctness into our law. The federal government has no authority to do this. Harry Reid has no right to tack it on to a bill that is completely unrelated. And, the Shepards and the politicians have no right to mischaracterize the motives of Matthew’s murderers in order to guilt the public into accepting the erosion of our fundamental, God-given rights.
For me, this isn’t about gays and the transgendered. I couldn’t care less what your sexual orientation is or if you think you were born the wrong sex and want to change that. I just wanted to clear up some of those facts, though. I’ve been hearing this lie that Matthew Shepard was killed because of his sexual orientation for so long that even I almost believe it, except I know the truth. This is about a violation of our civil rights. It is about the criminalization of our thoughts. What will serve as the evidence of our hate? Our comments, opinions, thoughts?
This is about hate crimes legislation. No matter who it is protecting, it’s a bad idea and unconstitutional on several grounds. What does it matter why someone did something? Is there such a thing as a “love crime?” Should we go more lenient on people because they committed their crime out of love? That sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Just as penalizing people more heavily because their crime was committed out of hate should sound absurd. When is hate not involved in a violent crime?
And, once again, I have to bring us back to that pesky piece of paper that our Republic was built on. I’m pretty sure, once again, Congress does not have the right or authority to pass such laws. Our constitutional lawyer president should know that. So, not only will this law inherently infringe on our rights as spelled out in the Bill of Rights, the passage of this law is in direct violation of our Constitution. But, it would seem to me, we stopped caring about that a long time ago.
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