Recently, I have seen several prominent Reformed and Evangelical Christians chastising the Christian community for hyperventilating regarding the recent hate crimes legislation that is moving through Congress. The constant verbal flogging used by these prominent men is that much is being made about nothing since the express language of the hate crimes legislation increases penalty for hate crimes while saying nothing about hate speech. Their point seems to be that this proposed hate crimes legislation will only effect people committing crimes and since Christians don’t commit crimes the legislation is nothing to be concerned about.
These people criticizing those of us who are raising voices of warning about this proposed hate crimes legislation are not people who are aware that how legislation gets written, interpreted and implemented are very different realities. To be honest the prominent Reformed and Evangelical critics are political naifs who do not realize how the game is played in Washington.
In Washington all laws are expansively interpreted so that the qualifications that were originally part of legislation is often ignored by those executing and prosecuting the law. In the Government class I am currently teaching we are seeing the historical use of this maximal judicial hermeneutic.
Paul Craig Roberts makes this same point in a recent article he wrote,
“The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was directed at drug lords. Nothing in the law says anything about divorce; yet it soon was applied in divorce cases.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act explicitly bans racial quotas and defines racial discrimination as an intentional act. Yet, quotas were imposed by the civil rights bureaucracy on the basis of the 1964 Act, and intent was replaced by statistical disparity.
The Clean Water Act makes no reference to wetlands and conveys no powers to the executive branch to create wetlands regulations. Yet, for example, Ocie and Carey Mills, who had a valid Florida state permit to build a house, were imprisoned by federal bureaucrats, who claimed jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. The bureaucrats ruled that the clean dirt used to level the building lot constituted discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters of the U.S. No navigable waters were involved, and according to the state of Florida, no wetlands.”
Woods and Gutzman’s book “Who Killed The Constitution,” likewise delivers example after example of how legislation is interpreted in a maximal fashion quite contrary to it’s supposed limitations.
Prominent Reformed and Evangelical Christians ought to do their research on how legislation has been used to pursue ends that were putatively not part of the original legislation before they criticize people who have a historical sense of how this kind of thing works.
Mark my words …. the hate crimes legislation that is currently moving through Washington, if passed, will eventually be used to stifle speech against the perverts that the legislation seeks to protect.
” . . . prominent Reformed and Evangelical critics are political naifs . . .”
You are being too kind.
Good article! Thank you for speaking the truth, and I pray the critics of those sounding the alarm over this legislation will wake up before it is too late and they find themselves faced with the choice of either censoring their sermons or going to jail.