As presently envisioned, the federal hate speech law proposed by Sen. Ted Kennedy et al will only be applied to silence opposition to Organized Sodomy.
This is the kind of hate speech regime we find in Canada today. Here's how it works in the Great White North: anybody who says or writes anything a homosexual doesn't like winds up in front of what is laughingly called a human rights tribunal, where he is summarily destroyed.
These are not courts, mind you. The hearing officers don't have to be judges or lawyers: any gay activist, feminist, or Marxist college professor will do. They are not bound by rules of evidence. They are not bound by precedent. All legal expenses incurred by the plaintiff are paid by the government, but the defendant must pay his own. Even if by some miracle he gets off with an acquittal, he still drowns in lawyers' fees. But the tribunal sees to it that few such miracles occur.
Under this regime, critics of Big Sodomy can be held personally responsible for any criminal incident, anywhere in Canada, in which a homosexual is the victim. If a poof gets mugged in the street, it must be because the mugger read the critic's blog piece on Romans Chapter One. If the mugger gets away scot-free and is never arrested, or even identified, the dissident blogger is still on the hot seat. Anyone can lodge a complaint against him, and the tribunal is off to the races.
In the absence of an actual crime, a homosexual can still complain that the blogger's essay made him feel threatened, or just uncomfortable; and the tribunal will come gunning for the critic.
Why do so many members of the U.S. Congress want this to happen here? My guess is because they're evil.
Even so, I would be willing to accept a hate speech law if it protected everyone, including me: a hate speech law that specified that conservative, Biblical Christians are also never to be made to feel uncomfortable. No more cheap jokes about pedophile priests or peculating ministers; no more mockery of Christians on TV sitcoms; no more movies in which the Christian is the villain; no more Bill Maher or Rosie O'Donnell accusing us of everything from blowing up the World Trade Center to mere stupidity; no more catty little books by nasty atheists--in short, never is to be heard a discouraging word about Christians or their faith. We are to get the same pampering now proposed for homosexuals.
Indeed, the protection of hate speech laws should be extended to everyone. No one should ever have to feel threatened or abused because someone else doesn't like the cut of his jib. The law should even protect politicians. Why should a Congressman be made to feel uncomfortable? Who are we to criticize our U.S. Senators? That's hate speech!
The best hate speech laws, in the end, are those which ban any kind of speech at all: "Nobody gets to say nothin'."
And we can all be comfortable--right up until the moment we start screaming.
Copyright by Lee Duigon
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Lee Duigon is a Christian free-lance writer whose work can be seen regularly at www.chalcedon.edu.
