Hate Crimes Bill Protects WHO??

Is this what we need in our country?

Democratic House members passed HR 1913 this week.
The new hate crimes legislation protects pedophiles but democrats refused to add veterans and grandmothers to the legislation.

The House passed the bill 249 to 175 with 231 democrats voting for the legislation.
Earned Media reported:

H.R. 1913 (Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009) is not about stopping crime but is designed to give "actual or perceived" sexual preference or "gender identity" (which is still classified as a mental disorder) the same legal status as race. The DSM IVR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychologists and psychiatrists to diagnose mental disorders) lists more than 30 "sexual orientations" and "Gender Identity Disorders," including pedophilia. The hate crimes bill does not limit "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" and, thus, includes all these disorders and fetishes. The use of "actual or perceived" includes those with disorders or deviant sexual preferences and those who do not have such disorders or fetishes, so long as it is alleged that the person charged allegedly "thought" the other person had such disorder or fetish...

Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: "Sexual orientation and gender identity include pedophilia and every imaginable deviant fetish. Cross-dressers and pedophiles find refuge in this so-called hate crimes bill, while veterans and grandmas are left to fend for themselves. Obviously, this bill is not about the prevention of crime but is all about pushing a radical sexual anarchy. This bill will crush free speech and trample free exercise of religion."

Here is more information on the bill.

This is heading directly toward thought crimes.  I've blogged on this more than once before - a crime is a crime, and trying to determine what someone was thinking while perpetrating that crime has absolutely no bearing on things!  To elevate one group of people over another group of people is to go down a very slippery slope that will end up with everyone being categorized and arguing about whose elevated rights supersede everyone else's elevated rights.  It's a hopeless scenario that can only end in injustice and pandering.

Hot Air agrees:

[W]e don't differentiate between murder for profit and murder for a particular animus of hate.  Doing that creates a subtle but significant change in which the state has suddenly become the arbiter of thought, determining different outcomes based on thought despite the similarity of crime.  The First Amendment arguments are obvious, but Jazz Shaw thinks this also violates the Fourteenth as well:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Long story short: When you pass laws which assign greater guilt to certain parties for committing the same crimes, based on nothing more than what they were thinking at the time and the "class" of citizens who were the victims, then you are providing unequal protection of the laws. You are assigning a higher value to the lives, liberty and property of some victims than others based on their sexual orientation, their race, skin color, religion, etc.

That's exactly right — and, in fact, that's the explicit desire of lawmakers.  They want to alleviate what they see as a greater degree of victimhood with a greater degree of government correction.  Those motives may be understandable, but they're entirely incompatible with equality before the law.  Creating classes of victims means creating classes of citizenry.  Either we're all the same, or we're just competing for the most politically-correct biases. That's more likely to perpetuate resentment than it is to reduce hatred.

The key to fighting crime is to prosecute aggressively and apply long sentences, especially to violent and repeat offenders, no matter who they are or whom they victimized.

So, is this what we need in this country?  Maybe not, but it's what we've got.  Thanks, Democrats.

There's my two cents.