My my, the President certainly seems willing to bring out the veto pen more often these days, now that he has to look out of his window at a Capitol Building that would rather see him in prison than strolling down its corridors. When President Bush had a docile, agreeable, and largely spineless Republican Congress at his beck and call, he knew that whatever he said would go when it came to legislation, and that’s not the case anymore. Something tells me that he’ll finally get some use out of his veto pen now that Congress is intent on repairing the damage he and his conservative cronies have done to the country and exercising their oversight responsibilities and rooting out the truth in the myriad of scandals, corruption, and potentially illegal activities under the White House’s direction. But unfortunately, the fact that the President has the ability to, with the flick of a pen, condemn millions of Americans to a lack of protection against hatred, injustice, and intolerance is nearly unforgivable.

The House passed hate crimes legislation that would add crimes against women and homosexuals to the list of federal crimes punishable by federal law. The Senate appears ready to pass the same legislation. Unfortunately, the frightened evangelical Christian right called on their intolerant army to get try and squash the bill. When they failed, they petitioned a President with nothing to lose, no legacy left to stand on, and a desire to appease the radical right that had started to worry about him in the first place. Passing hate crimes legislation like this would have protected individuals like Matthew Shepherd, who was beaten to death simply for being gay, and remove federal insulation from those who murdered him, under federal law. It would have protected individuals like Brandon Teena, a transgendered teen who was raped and murdered by two male friends after they discovered that Brandon was biologically female, and forced the Justice Department to get involved when local officials showed no interest in finding the killers or making any arrests. Brandon was the basis of the movie “Boys Don’t Cry,” and his killers are still on the loose.

Apparently, according to the pseudo-religious right and their ignorant conservative friends, these people aren’t worth protecting, and if you asked them to their faces, they would likely tell you so – the same way they and their forebears would likely have cheered and brought children to public lynchings of Black people – the same way those people’s forebears would have cheered at public beatings of women suspected of adultery years before. Somehow, this twisted, misappropriated, misconstrued version of Christianity that’s touted in the American conciousness got it into its head that the morality that matters is the morality that makes their pastors wealthy and draw in big congregations fearful of a world they don’t understand and don’t want to experience. And because of that, people are dying, people’s lives are being destroyed, and people are being actively discriminated against.

And to be honest, if the only thing that Congressional republicans can come up with are empty, baseless threats that somehow protecting homosexuals and women from being beaten at the hands of those who hate them for who they are would somehow be in turn hateful to the so-called “Christians” who find themselves threatened by anything resembling reality, then they’ll have to do better than that in the long run.

Some of those same republicans have claimed that somehow making killing a gay person because they’re gay a federal hate crime, somehow making beating a woman simply for speaking out against domestic violence, would make it illegal to speak out against homosexuality or feminism, and while personally I can think of worse things than all of those people being federally required to shut up, it would do no such thing. The KKK is an excellent parallel example here – just because vandalizing a black family’s home is a hate crime doesn’t mean the KKK doesn’t have the right to rally in cities where they can get permits, and doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to have shout their hate speech from a megaphone where they can find someone to listen. Similarly and very equally, this doesn’t mean that the so-called men of God who denounce homosexuality from their tainted pulpits won’t be able to do so, and it doesn’t mean the right-wing nutjobs can’t get on their talk radio shows and spout as much hate as they choose to anyone foolish enough to listen and believe them. Their rights are protected, and so are the rights of those they hate so much – and that’s what’s truly threatening to them.

Even though President Bush is sure to veto the legislation when it comes to his desk, this, if nothing else, is an excellent reminder of how important it is to vote for a change in the coming 2008 elections, to vote for progress, to vote for an America that loves its citizens and treats them all with justice and tolerance, and protects the rights of its minorities even in the face of irrational hatred by others. This is a teachable moment for America, and while I’m certainly preaching to the choir (no pun intended), I certainly hope that the rest of America will sit up and listen. Just because someone doesn’t like who they are, what they look like, or how they lead their own private lives, their rights could very well be next.

[ House Passes Expanded Hate Crimes Bill ]
Source: The Houston Chronicle