Essay 4064

From USA Today…

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Ministers say hate crimes act could muzzle them

By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

Minister Harry Jackson recalls being told about the black men who were lynched near his home in Florida in the 1950s and his family’s flight to Ohio after a state trooper threatened his father at gunpoint for helping blacks register to vote.

“That was a real hate crime,” Jackson says.

Crimes such as those spurred black ministers to join the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Today, Jackson, pastor of the Hope Christian Church in Lanham, Md., leads a movement against what gay activists say is their civil rights act: the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007.

Jackson and more than 30 ministers say the law could prevent clergy from doing what their civil rights forebears did: preach against immoral acts. “We believe there is an anti-Christian muzzle-the-pastor kind of feeling behind this kind of law,” Jackson says. “I need to be able to preach that adultery, fornication, straying from the way of the Lord is wrong.”

Activists say argument is a lie

Proponents of the bill, which would increase penalties for attacks on gays motivated by the person’s sexual orientation, say Jackson’s position is nonsense.

“They cannot be more protected than they are … to do that because (the bill) reiterates their right to say what they want to say,” says Harry Knox, director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group in Washington that is pushing for the law. Jackson’s argument “is a lie, and it should not be told in the name of the Gospel,” he said.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would allow the Justice Department to assist state prosecutors in cases of violent felonies motivated by “prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of the victim.”

Federal action could be triggered in states that do not have hate crimes laws or if authorities fail to prosecute such attacks. Penalties would range from 10 years to life in prison.

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