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Check Out the Correct Responses Below.

1. The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard was a brutal anti-homosexual hate crime that shows why hate crime laws are so desperately needed today.

1. FALLACY. The heinous murder of Matthew Shepard was a robbery gone bad—not an act of anti-homosexual hatred. Wyoming has no hate crime law, but justice was fully accomplished. Shepard’s murderers both received life imprisonment—with no possibility of parole. Learn more when you read Truth 1, “‘Hate Crimes’ Are Not Crimes of Hate.” 

 2.    Hate crime laws are needed because we face an epidemic of hate crimes in America.

1. FALLACY. FBI statistics indicate that hate crimes constitute a miniscule percentage of all crime and are on the decline. “Hate crimes” account for .08 percent of the total crime problem facing America, according to 2006 FBI crime statistics. Learn more when you read Truth 2, “Hate Crime Laws Are a Solution in Search of a Problem.”

 

3. Hate crime laws punish offenders for what they think and say.

1. FACT. Hate crime laws criminalize prejudice by adding fines or prison time when offenses are infected by so-called “hate” or bias. They violate a fundamental tenet of American law that government has authority over actions only—and not opinions. Learn more when you read Truth 3, “Hate Crime Laws Criminalize Thought.”

 

4. Hate crime laws give preferential treatment to certain classes of victims.

1. FACT. Hate crime laws create a two-tiered system of justice. Instead of equal justice under the law, hate crime statutes impose more severe penalties when victims belong to certain specially protected groups. The same crime brings different time—depending on the victims. Learn more when you read Truth 4, “Hate Crime Laws Violate Equal Justice Under the Law.”

 

5. Hate crime laws are not a tool to fight crime, but a way to send the message against prejudice.

1. FACT. Hate crime laws are largely symbolic. Hate crime laws exist not to fight crime, since laws already exist to punish criminal behavior. Their true purpose is social engineering—to teach Americans that prejudice against certain designated groups is absolutely forbidden. Learn more when you read Truth 5, “Hate Crime Laws Are About Recognition, Not Fighting Crime.”

 

6. Police find it easy and self-evident to identify a hate crime.

1. FALLACY. Identifying a “hate crime” is a hopelessly subjective enterprise that requires police to know the mind of the offender—an impossible task. The attempt to divine bias in an offender opens the door to invasive and futile examinations of a suspect’s thoughts and associations. Learn more when you read Truth 6, “Hate Crime Laws Burden the Justice System.”

 

7. Hate crime laws elevate the importance of groups and undermine social unity.

1. FACT. Hate crime laws divide Americans along ethnic, gender, and “sexual orientation” fault lines. They hasten what scholar Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called the “disuniting of America” and move us toward a legal system based on one’s membership in a group. Learn more when you read Truth 7, “Hate Crime Laws Are a Vehicle for Identity Politics.”

 

8. Hate crime laws have no impact on freedom of speech.

1. FALLACY. Laws banning “hate” have been used in other nations to criminalize speech. Pastors and others have faced arrest and prison for challenging homosexual conduct or Islam in Sweden, Australia, Britain, and Canada—all nations with hate speech laws. Learn more when you read Truth 8, “Hate Crime Laws Jeopardize Freedom of Speech.”

 

9. Pastors who are faithful to God’s Word have nothing to fear from hate crime laws.

1. FALLACY. Hate crime laws are on a collision course with religious liberty. Federal hate crimes legislation passed by both houses of Congress opens the door to charging clergymen and other Christian leaders with criminal conspiracy if what they say or write contributes to an act of hate by someone in their audience. Learn more when you read Truth 9, “Hate Crime Laws Threaten Religious Liberty.”

 

10. The cause of homosexual marriage is advanced by hate crime laws.

1. FACT. Hate crime laws have been used in the Netherlands, Vermont, New Jersey, and California as key steppingstones in a long-term strategy to legitimize homosexual conduct and win the right for homosexuals to “marry.” Learn more when you read Truth 10, “Hate Crime Laws Advance the Homosexual Agenda.”