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Edited on Sun Feb-25-07 05:55 PM by KzooDem
I wrote the following opinion piece and am sending it to my local paper. In light of the beating death of Andrew Anthos, I feel the urge to call out evangelical Christians on their efforts to kill the hate crimes bill recently introduced in the US House of Representatives.
I posted this over in GD, but it seemed to sink rather quickly. My hope was that it would remain a bit more active not out of vanity, but in the hope that people would see it and be compelled to a) contact their representatives, and b) feel free to plagarize, modify, find inspiration in it to send a letter to their own local papers.
Mabye I should have posted it over here, where I'm more or less singing to the choir? At any rate, please feel free to use bits, pieces, modify, plagarize, etc... to send a letter to your own local paper if you're comfortable doing so.
Peace!
Seventy-two year old Detroit resident Andrew Anthos was a gentle, quiet, unassuming man. A patriotic soul, he spent nearly two decades tirelessly trying to get the State of Michigan to bathe the capitol dome in red, white and blue spotlights for one night each year.
On February 13, as Anthos rode a city bus from the public library to his Detroit apartment, he was harassed by a fellow rider. Quietly ignoring his harasser, he got off the bus near his apartment building. His harasser also got off the bus, followed Anthos, and continued his verbal taunts. As Anthos helped a neighbor navigate his wheelchair through a pile of snow, his harasser beat him multiple times over the head with a metal pipe. The attack left Anthos paralyzed below the neck and unable to speak. He eventually died from his injuries on February 23.
Why would a random bully on a public bus target a gentle, non-threatening senior citizen like Anthos for such a heatless, inhuman attack? Because Anthos was a gay man. As his harasser-turned-murderer taunted him prior to the attack, he was asking if Anthos was gay and made anti-gay slurs. This meek, peaceful man was targeted, maimed, and killed simply because he was gay.
Yet, “Christian” organizations such as American Family Association, Focus On The Family, and Concerned Women of America would like you to believe that someone who perpetrates hate crimes on helpless, innocent people like Andrew Anthos simply because of who they are deserve no special consideration or penalty from our judicial system.
House of Representatives Bill 254, introduced in Washington D.C on January 5th, 2007 states: “…the incidence of violence motivated by the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability of the victim poses a serious national problem.” If passed, the bill would set clear guidelines for what constitutes a hate crime, and provide minimum sentencing guidelines for anyone convicted of such a crime.
It’s not that these organizations and supporters are against a hate crimes bill, per se. They’re up in arms because it specifically seeks to protect gays and lesbians from hate crimes. Yet, if we were still throwing Christians to the lions and a group was seeking to exclude religion from a potential hate-crimes bill, the James Dobsons, Pat Robertsons, Jerry Falwells, and Gary Glenns of the world and their supporters would be mired in even deeper self-righteous snits than they typically are.
When confronted with crises of faith, conservative evangelical Christians are fond of asking themselves and others “what would Jesus do?” If one believes biblical history that Christ welcomed and befriended prostitutes and various other outcasts of society, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine he would have supported a law that would punish someone who beats a fellow human to a bloody pulp simply because they belong to a specific group of people, including homosexuals.
Don’t allow these organizations and their supporters to cloak their brand of bigotry in the Bible. If these over-ambitious, misguided people -- who curiously identify themselves as “pro-life” -- are successful in blocking the HR Bill 254 hate crimes bill because it happens to also protect gays and lesbians, they will, in effect, discount the value of every human life that falls under its umbrella of protection.
If you’re an immigrant, have a disability, practice a non-mainstream religion, are an ethnic or racial minority, or identify as gay or lesbian, HR Bill 254 would hold the people who would seek you out and attack you simply for who you are to a higher standard of justice. Contact your U.S representatives and urge them to support HR Bill 254.
If you don’t fall into one of those categories, but are a reasonable, caring human being who believes that someone who would hunt down and beat a defenseless, old man into a coma because of who he is deserves specialty penalties for their crime, contact your U.S representatives and urge them to support HR Bill 254.
If you are among those who seek to block HR Bill 254 simply because it includes gays and lesbians in its protections, perhaps you should take pause and ask yourself “What would Jesus do?”
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