Christianist Lies About Hate Crimes Act

As some of my previous posts have indicated, Focus on the Family, Exodus, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, Traditional Values Coalition, Mission America — all of them have repeated some serious outright, deliberate lies about what the proposed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes legislation would actually do. Several "talking head" individuals associated with these organizations have done the same, such as Robert Knight pictured at left.. Sadly, much of the news media does not challenge these liars and ask them to point out the language in the act that supports their claims. If the media did its job and asked these questions, the falsity of the claims would soon become most evident.

I am joining with Box Turtle Bulletin and making a challenge: The actual proposed legislation in can be found here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.1105. I dare the Christianist organizations to do the same and invite their readers to review the text of the act. I challenge them to point to any part of the bill which would usurp the First Amendment. In fact, I challenge them to point to any part of the bill which even comes close to limiting speech. The bill only mentions violence, and it only extends penalties to acts of violence. I would surely hope these good Christians have a problem with committing violence, but give the simmering hate of this crowd, I am not sure. They surely have a problem with not lying.