'Hate Crimes' Bill is Full of Swill
By J. Matt Barber
May 8, 2009
Senate sponsors and liberal activist proponents of the federal "hate crimes" bill, S. 909, have been caught in a series of bald-faced lies. So confident am I of this, that if they can prove me wrong (for real I mean -- you know, with evidence and such) I'll join their little soirée, don a very large pink evening gown and publicly voice support for the legislation.
To the express exclusion of other identifiable groups -- including veterans, the elderly and the homeless -- S. 909, in its current form, would grant special federal resources and preferred minority status to pedophiles, homosexuals, cross-dressers and -- as Democratic sponsor Alcee Hastings recently admitted on the House floor -- a host of other APA recognized "sexual orientations" (i.e., deviant sexual fetishes and perversions).
Not only is this legislation constitutionally dubious on First Amendment grounds, and a prima facie violation of Fourteenth Amendment required "equal protection of the laws;" it also flies in the face of the Tenth Amendment, which explicitly limits the federal government's authority in such matters to those powers delegated by the U.S. Constitution.
Here's how they're doing it:
In order for the feds to usurp the States' police power, liberals in Congress have had to openly place, within the very language of the bill, a series of transparent lies. To get around that pesky old Constitution and accomplish this brash federal power grab, they've been forced to misuse and abuse the Commerce Clause.
In a feeble attempt to constitutionally justify federal interference with local law enforcement, S. 909's sponsors have made -- within the bill's "Findings" section -- several outlandish and unsustainable claims relative to "interstate commerce." So outlandish are these claims, in fact, that the same language was intentionally withdrawn from the House version before it was passed and referred to the Senate.
But since the bill's Senate sponsors recognize that failure to include these fantasy "findings" immediately renders the legislation unconstitutional, the interstate commerce language has quickly and quietly found its way home.
First, while addressing "hate crimes" allegedly motivated by so-called "sexual orientation" bias, the bill asserts that existing law is "inadequate to address this problem." This is patently untrue.
When the legislation's 1968 "hate crimes" forerunner was introduced, there were multiple and verifiable cases of local prosecutors refusing to indict whites for violent crimes committed against blacks. Moreover, the 1968 law was actually conceived and passed with the primary purpose of righting this specific wrong.
The exact opposite is true today. As FBI statistics reveal, in the relatively few instances where bias motivated crimes are committed against homosexuals or cross-dressers, those crimes are, without fail, zealously prosecuted under existing law. Victims are granted "equal protection of the laws" regardless of sexual preference or proclivity.
Yet these same victims are, nonetheless, shamelessly and publicly exploited by homosexual activists and the mainstream media as the latest "hate crimes" cause célèbre. This, even as hypersensitive local prosecutors bend over backwards to take-down alleged "gay-bashing" assailants as to avoid kneejerk accusations of systemic "homophobia."
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