Hate crimes legislation and Dire Consequences

It gets frustrating to seek the depths that the anti-gay industry will stoop to in its quest to demonize the gay community and deny us any protection under law.

Case in point: Americans for Truth About Homosexuality's latest batch of lies about hate crimes legislation.

The piece claims that adding homosexuality to hate crimes legislation will ultimately lead to a curtailing of some Chrisitians' first amendment right to free speech.

This is a lie.

Even sadder than the fact that we need hate crimes legislation at all is the constant distortion tactics used by members of the anti-gay industry when they speak out against it.

Hate crimes protection already exists for certain groups but you never hear the religious right whining about it. They only sound the alarm when someone thinks of adding the gay community the groups protected by hate crimes legislation.

Then they use what I like to call the Dire Consequences tactic in order to scare Christians. The anti-gay industry constantly raises the notion that creating laws protecting the interests of gays and lesbians will lead to negative consequences, but they hardly ever provide actual proof as to the validity of these charges

In this particular case, Peter LaBarbera uses incidents that took place in foreign countries to make the claim that hate crimes legislation for the gay community will eventually lead to Christians going to jail for speaking out against homosexuality.

Hate crimes legislation do not cover speech. They cover motivation behind violent crimes. Christians who declare in that homosexuality is a sin are in no danger of going to jail if homosexuality is added in hate crimes legislation.

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is clearly trying to motivate their troops based on fear - a most un-Christian tactic.