Posted by
Patriot Pastor on Monday, October 26, 2009 6:18:29 PM
Source: 'Familly Resource Council
The Human Rights Campaign will have to come up with a new fundraising pitch, since they can no longer claim that this Congress has done nothing to advance their agenda. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate gave away the store by
passing "hate crimes" (68-29) as part of the Defense Authorization bill, effectively opening the floodgates to sweeping social change. From the floor, Senators like John McCain (R-Ariz.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) showed their disgust that our troops were being used as political pawns by the leadership to pass a proposal that couldn't stand on its own.
Democrats like Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.) fired back, arguing that "we've seen a marked increase in hate crimes." But the data doesn't support his claim. The FBI's statistics on hate crimes actually show a decrease in the number of hate crimes being reported. In the most recent year for which statistics are available, 2007, the FBI found that 7,624 hate crime incidents were reported. Racially motivated incidents were 50.8% of the total, followed by religiously motivated incidents at 18.4%, then ones motivated by "sexual orientation" bias at 16.6%.
In 2007, there were 90,427 forcible rapes and 16,929 murders reported. Less than one-tenth of one percent of the national crime total for those offenses consisted of "hate crimes." This does not constitute a serious national problem or warrant federal interference. Bear in mind that the Hate Crimes Reporting Act of 1990 required that the FBI interpret hate crimes more broadly to include acts of intimidation. Of the hate crime offenses reported, 28.5% of them were intimidation related, and when it came to crimes against persons, 47.4% of them were intimidation related. To use these statistics and claim that there's a hate crimes crisis is misleading.
THIS BILL IS CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL SINCE IT ATTACKS THE FIRST AMENDMENT.