AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION OF PENNSYLVANIA
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AFA of PA ACTION ALERT
July 15, 2009
1.) Hate Crimes to Advance as Amendment – Vote This Week
2.) Senate Scorecard
Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy is in Washington, D.C. this week and Senator Harry Reid has promised her he will introduce the hate crimes bill as an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill. This will probably take place this morning, thus at this point we do not have the amendment number or the exact language. Cloture will then be filed and the final vote will not come before late Thursday or early Friday morning. (As a side note here: Reid has also said he will support an amendment to place an 18-month moratorium on ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ if it’s introduced. Passage of such would allow homosexuals to serve in the military openly. For more information on the dangers to our military, go to Elaine Donnelly’s website Center for Military Readiness.)
Homosexual activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign have pulled out all the stops to see that the hate crimes bill is passed. They and their allies have been bombarding Senators’ offices all this week. Remember this bill has already passed in the House and President Obama has promised to sign it if the Senate passes it.
If this bill passes, two major changes will take place: 1.) gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability will be added to the federal hate crimes law as protected categories 2.) it removes the requirement that a victim be engaged in a federally protected activity such as going to the post office, serving on a jury or attending public school before the federal government can prosecute.
The real purpose of this bill is to silence or, at the very least, chill the First Amendment rights of those with deeply held religious beliefs that engaging in homosexual acts are sinful. Swedish Pastor Ake Green faced hate crime charges because he preached from Romans 1 in his own church. In British Columbia, a Catholic counselor was fined $1,000 for saying a homosexual couple’s lifestyle was “not normal or natural.” Here in PA we know how hate crimes laws can ‘evolve.’ Less than two years after members of the House supporting hate crimes assured Pennsylvanians this was all about thugs, hooligans and blood on the streets, 11 Christians were arrested for singing choruses and reading Scripture at a Philadelphia homosexual event. Click here to listen to my April 29th interview with Michael Marcavage as we talk about that fateful day in October 2004.
Remember ‘sexual orientation’ is not defined in this bill and an amendment to specifically not protect those engaged in pedophilia (a sexual orientation) was rejected by the Democrat-controlled House.
2.)The AFA of PA has started a new project – creating a scorecard to follow the votes of Senators Specter and Casey and one to follow the votes of the 19 PA Congressmen. The Senate Scorecard is complete – although it will change as more votes are cast – and is up on our website. The Congressional one is still in the works, but will be up on our website as soon as it is completed.
If concerned, these are the steps you can take:
1.) Contact Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Bob Casey, Jr. and ask them to vote ‘no’ on the Hate Crimes Amendment. Click here for contact information, please e-mail AND call their district office nearest you.
Additional points:
n The Matthew Shepard hate crimes legislation is not necessary (Wyoming, where Shepard was murdered, does not have a hate crimes law yet his murderers are each serving a life sentence. They received the death penalty, but Shepard’s parents do not believe in it and asked that the murderers serve life sentences instead.)
n There is no epidemic of hate crimes-- There were nearly a million assaults in 2007. 242 assaults included some kind of bodily injury in which there was some motive attributed to bias or hatred because of a selected group.
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