Advocates for homosexual rights made history in 1990 when they gathered around then President George H.W. Bush as he signed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act into law. The measure requires the Justice Department to count how many hate crimes are committed each year in America
The ceremony at the Old Executive Office Building was historic on two fronts. First, the White House invited more than 20 homosexual activists to witness the event, something that had never been done. It was also, more significantly, “the first time in history that sexual orientation will be included in a federal civil rights law,” as Tim McFeeley, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, said. The Washington Blade, a homosexual weekly, called it a “landmark development.” For President G. H. W. Bush, the event may have been meant to signal his “tolerance,” but as one Washington observer put it, “what the bill is really all about is legitimacy for homosexuality."
The Goal—Legitimacy
That is exactly what homosexual advocates had in mind in the mid-1980s when they enlisted Rep. Barney Frank, an open homosexual, to help add them to the list of victim groups in the proposed Hate Crimes Statistics Act. Inclusion for them was “an important first step toward official recognition of gay rights."
For homosexuals, the long march to legitimacy—which includes same-sex marriage—is being taken one step at a time. They understand that legal recognition in one area of the law will pry open long-closed doors in others. That is why hate crime laws, which pose an immediate threat to free speech and religious liberty, also pose a long-term danger. They bring added legitimacy to the homosexual lifestyle and, on the federal level, enhance prospects that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.
Law is incremental. Statutes such as hate crime laws can serve as stepping stones in a long-term strategy to remake criminal and family law. This strategy has been successful in the Netherlands, the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage, and in some states in the U.S.
Dispatching History
Laws granting recognition and special rights to homosexuals—including hate crime statutes—helped the Vermont, New Jersey, and California high courts to open the doors to civil unions or marriage for same-sex partners.
Vermont’s Supreme Court struck down traditional marriage laws in 1999 by relying, in part, on earlier legislative actions. The high court first dispatched the weight of history by stating that “equal protection of the laws cannot be limited by eighteenth-century standards” and went on to say,
… whatever claim may be made in light of the undeniable fact that federal and state statutes—including those in Vermont—have historically disfavored same-sex relationships, more recent legislation plainly undermines the contention.
The court noted that Vermont legislators:
• repealed a ban on oral sex in 1977;
• passed a hate crime law in 1989 that included “sexual orientation” as a protected category;
• prohibited discrimination based on “sexual orientation” in 1991;
• legalized adoption by same-sex couples;
• and gave certain rights to couples who end their “domestic relationship.”
New Jersey’s Supreme Court also relied on earlier laws favoring homosexuals in 2006 when it ruled that same-sex couples should be given the right to marry or to have civil unions. New Jersey first passed a hate crime law in 1981, and the state high court, in its ruling, cited the numerous ways in which New Jersey law already recognized homosexuals. The court determined,
There is no rational basis for, on the one hand, giving gays and lesbians full civil rights in their status as individuals, and, on the other, giving them an incomplete set of rights when they follow the inclination of their sexual orientation and enter into committed same-sex relationships.
California’s Supreme Court also took notice of state laws barring discrimination based on “sexual orientation” when it gave homosexuals the right to marry in May 2008. The court said that the legislature had already granted same-sex couples “virtually all of the benefits and responsibilities afforded by California law to married opposite-sex couples” According to the court,
In light of the evolution of our state’s understanding concerning the equal dignity and respect to which all persons are entitled without regard to their sexual orientation, it is not appropriate to interpret these provisions in a way that, as a practical matter, excludes gay individuals from the protective reach of such basic civil rights.
An Incremental Approach
Homosexual rights advocates in California employed a succession of incremental legislative steps, including hate crime legislation (first made law in 1976 ), to reach the long-sought goal of gaining the right to “marry.” Dale Carpenter, a homosexual and a law school professor, wrote in 2004 that instead of “grabbing headlines with dramatic judicial victories,” homosexuals in California “were quietly and patiently persuading state legislators to experiment with increasing degrees of legal protection for gay couples."
The process, he said, has been so successful that “what started as almost nothing for gay partners in 1999 will have become shadow marriage by 2005.” All that remains is to overcome the will of the people, who will vote again in November 2008 on whether marriage means a man and a woman.
The same step-by-step approach brought success in the Netherlands, the first nation to legalize homosexual marriage in 2001. Kees Waaldjik, the author of the Dutch same-sex marriage law, wrote that the path to marriage began with decriminalization of homosexual conduct, followed by anti-discrimination legislation, and then recognition of same-sex unions and parenting rights. Waaldjik wrote,
… once a legislature has enacted that it is wrong to treat someone differently because of his or her homosexual orientation, it becomes all the more suspect that the same legislature is preserving rules of family law that do precisely that.
The High Court Opened the Door
The U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld a hate crime statute in 1994 , also advanced the cause of homosexual marriage by its 2003 decision striking down a Texas ban on sodomy. That ruling, Lawrence v. Texas, was relied on by the Massachusetts high court when it legalized same-sex marriage in late 2003.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia clearly expressed his view that the Lawrence decision would open the door to homosexual marriage, stating,
Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned.
The late Dr. D. James Kennedy also warned that the Lawrence case would “place in the hands of homosexual activists a powerful tool to beat down resistance to their demands for the legalization of same-sex ‘marriage.’"
There can be little doubt that the cause of same-sex “marriage” will be strengthened and true marriage weakened if Congress acts to make proposed hate crime legislation law. The passage of a federal hate crime law granting special protection on the basis of “sexual orientation,” would give homosexual activists one more argument to convince America’s High Court that the time has come to legalize same-sex “marriage.”
If that happens, the moral consequences to our nation will be devastating.