Hating On The Hill

by Joel Ready

“While you may not agree with the groups of people this bill seeks to protect, as human beings, you must realize that we owe this to them.” – Senator Cristy Payne on the infamous “Hate Crimes” Bill during COTH Session '07.

Hate crimes legislation was a source of controversy in the United States long before the famous debate that shook the halls of power on July 12 and 13 of this year at City on the Hill. Most recently, the U.S. House voted 237 to 180 to adopt a form of legislation that would make it illegal to “harass” an individual of an “alternate sexual orientation.”

Nothing seems to get people fighting quite like this bill.

"You’re essentially creating a civil right based on immoral and changeable behavior, and that’s a bad precedent to set in the law," explains Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, a legislative watchdog organization.

But 1,385 religious leaders signed a letter to congress stating, “As leaders of America’s religious communities, we urge Congress to stand united against one of the worst forms of oppression: violence based on personal characteristics and identity.”

So with all of this jargon, how can we know who’s right?

This first thing we have to understand about Hate Crimes legislation is the nature of these so-called “hate crimes.” What defines a hate crime? As Senator Steven Gaines has so eloquently noted, “I don’t know too many crimes that were committed because of love.”

The lack of solid definition for hate crimes is the very thing that makes legislation banning them so dangerous. If anyone claims they have been harassed because of hate, the government is obligated to protect them. But any government that is big enough to protect anyone from hate is a government big enough to control every facet of your existence.

Hate is a funny thing, because it is the natural substance of the human heart. “No man can tame the tongue,” James 3:8 says, because it spews forth poison from the human heart. Hate crimes legislation is futile, because it is based on a fatal error: human legislation, created by the human mind, cannot solve the problems of the human heart.

But the main problem with hate crimes legislation is much more surface level. It’s simple: The liberal left wants to take away our right to speak out against immorality and amorality. At the end of 1 Samuel 13, the Bible tells us about the Philistine battle strategy against the Israelites: They had all of the skilled blacksmiths, and so they simply raised prices until the Israelites could not afford to be armed. The chapter concludes, “So on the day of the battle, not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in his hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them” (1 Samuel 13:22).

Why is it important that we know the word of God and speak it with conviction? Because the Devil is trying to make it harder and harder for us to utilize our weaponry in this generation. This attack on our freedom of speech is just another example in a long line in the history of the long war against God. We must stand up against this threat, and oppose the so called “hate crime” legislation tyrants of our generation would impose on us, just as we oppose those who attempt to silence us in any other way.

So the next time you hear someone claim that hate crimes legislation is about protecting innocent people, help them to understand that, while we oppose hate, and while we oppose crimes, we will not allow anyone to redefine justice in order to advance their political agenda, nor will we allow the increasingly militant homosexual movement to muzzle our rights to freedom of expression in the name of their “civil” rights. And to anyone who would challenge us on this, I just have one thing to say: “Bring it on.”

Joel Ready is a journalist at CITY ON THE HILL in Maryland, and currently attends Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia where he is majoring in Mass Communications.