Tony Perkins, FRC: If you, like many Americans, are wondering what all the commotion is about over hate crimes legislation, consider this disturbing case in Crystal Lake, Illinois. In a high school prank gone terribly wrong, a 16-year-old girl distributed fliers at school that contained a picture of two male students kissing each other and a headline that read, "God hates [homosexuals]." (An ugly slang term was actually used.) According to reports, she managed to hand out about 40 copies before school officials intervened. Obviously, what the girl did was not only wrong, it was biblically inaccurate. God does not hate homosexuals. This type of behavior is not appropriate and the school officials should have disciplined the student accordingly. However, school officials chose to turn the matter over to local law enforcement. As a result, the teenager was charged with a "hate crime" by county officers and thrown into a juvenile detention center for nearly 20 days. When the 16-year-old appeared in court she was in shackles. The state's attorney said, "This is a classic case of the kind of conduct that the state legislature was directing the [hate crimes] law against. This is what the legislators wanted to stop, this kind of activity." However, the attorney's statements are in direct contradiction with the letter of the law, which says that a person can be charged with a hate crime if they commit "a criminal act with the intent to cause harm." Hate crimes, by definition, are violent acts. This is the progression of "hate crime" laws that has happened in almost every jurisdiction where they have been created. Once in place the laws are either modified or extended to include speech. FRC has just completed a joint project with Coral Ridge Ministries documenting how so-called "hate crime" laws have morphed into "hate speech" laws criminalizing biblically correct speech: Censoring the Church and Silencing Christians Tags: Christians, FRC, hate crimes, homosexual activism, persecution, Tony Perkins To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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