Freedom of Hate, Freedom of Religion.

May 2, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

[So-Called] Christian Attorneys Urge Senate to Vote Against ‘Hate Crimes’ Bill (Christian Post, May 1, 2009)

Attorneys at a Christian legal group are urging the U.S. Senate not to pass the expanded “Hate Crimes” bill, which the House this week voted 249-175 in favor of.

The attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund insist that the bill, H.R. 1913, could severely impede Americans’ constitutional rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression while creating additional legal protections for those engaged in homosexual behavior that are not available to everyone else.

If made into law, the bill would add violence against individuals based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability to the list of federal hate crimes. Current federal law only covers crimes committed on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity or national origin.

It figures. The Alliance Defense Fund is the right wing God squad that also gave you Proposition 8. Said Stuart Whatley of The America Prospect last October, “[The] Ultraconservative legal organization the Alliance Defense Fund is backing a California marriage ban with rhetoric about ‘defending’ family and children.”   His entire article is worth a careful re-read, but here is more:

Following the ADF’s defeat in California’s In re Marriage Cases in May, when the court ruled that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, the ADF found reinforcements in other conservative groups such as ProtectMarriage, the National Organization for Marriage and Focus on the Family. In the following months, this conservative conglomeration successfully garnered over one million signatures to place Prop 8 on the ballot with hopes of overturning the court’s ruling. The ADF’s role in the case was to “defend” its position on the legal definition of marriage — that it is exclusively between a man and a woman — under the aegis of traditional Christian family structures.

Just so you know what axe is bring ground by whom (according to Wikipedia), “ADF’s President, CEO, and General Counsel is Alan Sears. Sears was previously a Justice Department official under the administration of President Ronald Reagan, and has co-authored two books with Craig Osten: The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, and The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values.

Here is the ADF’s own news release on this. At the bottom of the page: “ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith.” Apparently they don’t think Christians can live out their faith without the legal right to hate. Has it crossed the minds of any of these “Christian” attorneys that Jesus was the victim of a hate crime?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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