On October 22, 2009, the Senate passed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act by a vote of 68 to 29 with much opposition among most Republicans. The only way Democrats could get their “Pedophile Protection Act” passed was to tack it onto HR 2647 The National Defense Authorization Act, a $680 billion defense appropriations plan that would normally receive support among Republicans.
The plan, which creates federal protections and privileges for homosexuals and other alternative lifestyles, but denies those protections to other groups of citizens was earlier was approved in the U.S. House.
Longtime opponents of hate crime legislation have warned how such a law will be used to keep Christians from speaking out against homosexuality and even reading passages from the Bible in a public forum. Barrack Obama, a longtime proponent of the plan to give homosexuals and those with other alternative lifestyles special protections not provided other classes of citizens, is expected to sign HR 2647 into law the last week in October.
HR 2647 also authorizes federal monies to be sent to state and local governments in pursuit of “preventing” hate crimes. Parents who oppose sex education of their very young children or who oppose a curriculum that treats choosing a spouse of the same sex or opposite sex as equally valid choices will be vilified and potentially charged with a hate crime under this law.
“The inclusion of the controversial language of the hate crimes legislation, which is unrelated to our national defense, is deeply troubling,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-AL, stated after the vote.
Obama was strongly supported during his 2008 presidential campaign by homosexual advocates, and has expressed a willingness to act on the plan, calling it an “important civil rights issue.”
The American Family Association said, “Everywhere hate crimes laws have gone into effect, they have been quickly used to intimidate, silence and punish people of faith who express deeply held religious objections to the normalization of homosexuality.
“Such laws not only punish officially disapproved speech and thought, they create two tiers of victims. Under hate crimes laws, some victims get more protections than others, which violates the fundamental American principle of equality under the law. In fact, such laws actively discriminate against heterosexual Christians who are victims of crime, since they will get less legal protection than homosexual victims.”
The American Family Association noted that since “sexual orientation” nowhere is defined in the law, “this law will give pedophiles, voyeurs, and exhibitionists special protections, which is why the bill has correctly been called ‘The Pedophile Protection Act.’”
The bill was nicknamed “The Pedophile Protection Act” when Rep. Steve King (R–IA) proposed an amendment during its trek through the U.S. House that would specify pedophiles could not use the law to protect their activities. Majority Democrats flatly refused.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that a homosexual activist who is attacked following a Christian minister’s sermon about homosexuality would be protected by the new federal law, but a minister attacked by a homosexual would not be.