There’s a Train [Wreck] a’ Coming
The amendment vote led Alan Sears, Alliance Defense Fund president and a former federal prosecutor, to say that “it could soon be less of a crime to beat up a pregnant woman than it is to criticize homosexual behavior from a pulpit."
A coalition of African-American pastors voiced concern that a federal hate crime law would silence their pulpits. Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., founder of the High Impact Leader Coalition, said the measure “can muzzle the black church” and “keep the church from preaching the Gospel."
That sounds overblown, but isn’t. Hate crime laws have already been used to ensnare pastors overseas (see chapter 8), while anti-discrimination codes and other civil laws favoring homosexuals have been used to assault religious freedom here.
The Train Has Left the Station
A Methodist retreat center in New Jersey lost a tax exemption in 2007 after it refused to let two lesbian couples use its facilities for their civil union ceremony. The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, in existence since 1869, said it could not allow the same-sex ceremony because it believes that marriage is between a man and a woman, as does its parent denomination, the United Methodist Church. That religiously based objection is of no consequence in New Jersey, where same-sex civil unions became legal in 2007, and the state anti-discrimination law gives homosexuals special protected status.
“Our law against discrimination does not allow [the group] to use those personal preferences, no matter how deeply held, and no matter—even if they’re religiously based—as a grounds to discriminate,” an attorney for the lesbians told National Public Radio. “Religion shouldn’t be about violating the law."
New Mexico’s human rights commission found the owners of a photography firm guilty of discrimination and fined them $6,600 in 2008 after its owners declined, based on Christian convictions, to photograph a commitment ceremony between two women. The owners are appealing the ruling, with assistance from the Alliance Defense Fund.
Town clerks in Vermont have no choice under state law but to issue civil union certificates to homosexual couples, even if they object on religious grounds. Several clerks challenged that law, but lost their lawsuit to have that requirement removed.
An Era of Intolerance
If town clerks can be required to violate their consciences, will ministers be forced to officiate for homosexual civil unions or “weddings?” “It is but a small step,” according to the Liberty Institute, “from requiring the issuance of civil union licenses to requiring the performing of solemnization ceremonies by ministers."
Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, warns that while “Gay-marriage proponents use the language of openness, tolerance and diversity, … one foreseeable effect of their success will be to usher in an era of intolerance and discrimination the likes of which we have rarely seen before."
Hate crime laws only escalate the conflict between religious liberty and homosexual rights. Anti-discrimination infractions can bring fines or a loss of tax-exemption; hate crime violations can mean time in prison. That is a possibility for pastors, since federal hate crime legislation would open the door for conspiracy convictions. A minister who preaches a message urging his congregation to oppose the homosexual agenda could be indicted for conspiracy to commit a crime, if one of his listeners acts in a way that is considered a violation of a federal hate crimes law.
Blaming Christians
“It is not difficult to imagine a situation in which a prosecutor might seek to link what they deem to be hateful speech to causing violent acts,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (TX). “A chilling effect on religious leaders and others who express their constitutionally protected beliefs unfortunately could result."
Attempts to link Christian speech to anti-homosexual violence have begun. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors lashed out at Christian groups after the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. The Board railed against an ad campaign featuring ex-homosexuals who found freedom through Christ and issued a proclamation charging that “An unfortunate, extreme result of these anti-gay campaigns is violence and even death."
The executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force charged in 2005 that “The literal blood of thousands of gay people physically wounded by hatred during 2004 is on the hands of Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Tony Perkins and so many others who spew hate for partisan gain and personal enrichment."
Risk to Pastors
But would federal hate crimes legislation really open the door to conspiracy charges? Rep. Louis Gohmert (TX) pressed Rep. Artur Davis (AL) in 2007 during House Judiciary committee debate as to whether the amendment Davis offered would, in fact, shield ministers from conspiracy charges.
Gohmert: And if I understood the gentleman's amendment—and I will put the question back to you—if a minister preaches that sexual relations outside of marriage of a man and woman is wrong, and somebody within that congregation goes out and does an act of violence, and that person says that that minister counseled or induced him through the sermon to commit that act, are you saying under your amendment that in no way could that ever be introduced against the minister?
Mr. Davis: No
That terse but candid response from Rep. Davis, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former federal prosecutor, highlights the potential risk pastors would face under a federal hate crime law.
Even if indictments were not brought against pastors, the potential for prosecution will cause some ministers to keep silent. That may be the point, according to Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family.
The purpose behind hate crime legislation, he said in 2007, is “not to punish what is already illegal. It is to muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality."
Not only that, but hate crime legislation, if made the law of the land, would help convince courts to legalize same-sex “marriage.”