By Andrea Lafferty
TVC Executive Director
Yesterday morning, I attended the U.S. Senate's "hate crimes" hearing on S. 909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The Senate Judiciary Committee held the hearing with a stacked deck of pro-hate crime bill witnesses.
Attorney General Eric Holder who was the Democrats "star" witness hemmed and hawed as a number of Republican Senators pressed him on the specific states that were not vigorously prosecuting crimes. It was clear after their questioning, and Holder's inability to name the offending localities, that there is little evidence of a failure among state and local officials to prosecute violent crimes motivated by bias or hatred-and little need for federal intervention.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) observed that no one had provided any convincing evidence that a federal hate crime law was needed.
Interestingly, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) pointed out that his office had received an overwhelming amount of opposition to the bill. This opposition came predominately from religious conservatives concerned about the jailing of pastors and silencing religious speech.
This proves that even if a Senator is liberal and you think they will not listen to you-they do look at their mail. Keep it up. The homosexual crowd knows they do not have the votes to pass the bill outright so they will try and attach it as an amendment. They have promised a vote by the end of July.
Watch TVC's video on hate crime legislation: URGENT ACTION NEEDED ON 'JAIL-A-PASTOR/PROTECT-A-PEDOPHILE' BILL
Two of the witnesses provided oral and written statements against hate crime legislation. One was Gail Heroit, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; the other was Brian Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
This week, TVC delivered a copy of our special hate crimes report on S. 909 to the Senate, along with a cover letter explaining why hate crime legislation is a threat to religious liberty and to free speech.
TAKE ACTION: Contact your two U.S. Senators and ask that they vote NO on S. 909.
ENDA On Fast Track
The "transgender-inclusive" Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is back once again - after being defeated in 2007. The legislation will allegedly protect those with a "gender identity" different than their birth sex.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is pushing ENDA as a way of getting gays, bisexuals, lesbians, transgenders (cross-dressers, drag queens, and transsexuals) federally protected minority status under federal law. Frank ran into trouble with the drag queen lobby in 2007 when he removed "
A hearing will begin soon on ENDA. We will be there.
TVC has produced a wealth of material on ENDA and the threat it poses to Christian businesses, schools, radio and TV stations and other enterprises.
