Bad headline/important story: 'U.S. Preacher Fined for Calling Homosexuality a Sin'

In Scotland, not in the U.S. The gentleman ran afoul of Scottish law in an illustration of the dangers of hate speech (not "hate crimes") laws.

Skipping right past Christian Post, the source of the bad headline, to Scotsman.com where the headline is "Preacher is fined for homophobia:"

A STREET preacher has prompted concerns over religious freedom in Scotland after being fined £1,000 for telling passers-by in Glasgow city centre that homosexuals deserved the "wrath of God" and would go to hell.

Shawn Holes admitted breaching the peace earlier this month by "uttering homophobic remarks" that were "aggravated by religious prejudice".

The American Baptist, who was touring Britain with colleagues, was arrested by police while responding to questions from people in Sauchiehall Street on 18 March.

. . .

The Roman Catholic Church, which backed stiffer "hate crime" penalties, said the fine seemed to criminalise anyone who repeated a widely held conviction.

Peter Kearney, its spokesman, said: "We supported this legislation but it is very difficult to see how this man can be charged for expressing a religious conviction.

Holes' case exemplifies the dangers of hate speech laws. Ed Brayton relates that Peter Tatchell, "a very outspoken gay rights activist in the UK," is standing up for Holes.

From DallasVoice.com:

Tatchell said: "Shawn Holes is obviously homophobic and should not be insulting people with his anti-gay tirades. He should be challenged and people should protest against his intolerance. However, in a democratic, free society it is wrong to prosecute him. Criminalisation is not appropriate. The price of freedom of speech is that we sometimes have to put up with opinions that are objectionable and offensive."

In close Tatchell quotes Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who in a characterization of Voltaire's view wrote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Amen.

Free speech trumps hate speech law in Canada

Anti-gay speech is protected in Canada, ruled Court of Queen's Bench in Alberta, CTV News reported today:

EDMONTON — A Court of Queen's Bench judge has ruled an anti-gay letter written by a former Alberta pastor in 2002 was not a hate crime and is allowed under freedom of speech.

Justice E.C. Wilson overturned a 2008 ruling by the Alberta Human Rights Commission that the letter by Stephen Boissoin that was published in the Red Deer Advocate broke provincial law.

At the time, the commission said it may even have played a role in the beating of a gay teenager two weeks after it was published.

The commission had ordered Boissoin to refrain from making disparaging remarks about homosexuals and to pay the complainant, former Red Deer high school teacher Darren Lund, $5,000 in damages.

Neither order can now be enforced, as Wilson declared them "unlawful or unconstitutional."

The issue is referred to in the Manhattan Declaration where it says:

In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate­ crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.

Hate speech laws have unintended consequences, and should be avoided.

Hate Studies

An interdisciplinary curriculum sparked by conversations at Gonzaga University.

It's time.

Rick Scarborough of Vision America reduced to incoherent raving about hate crime

In an almost unreadable news release Scarborough conjures up links between hate crime law, the tragedy at Fort Hood and homosexual activists making unlaunched attacks on the preaching of conservative pastors. Send flowers? Or perhaps a get-well card.

Hate crime basics for the fearful

What must I do to be prosecuted under the hate crime law after Obama signs the recently passed legislation?

The Q&A document [.pdf] developed by Third Way answers clearly by way of dealing with the most pervasive myth about the legislation:

Could a pastor be prosecuted for preaching that homosexuality is an abomination, or saying that gay people will go to hell?
No. Unless a person actually causes 'bodily injury,' or attempts to cause bodily injury by using a gun, bomb or dangerous weapons, they cannot be prosecuted under the proposed hate crimes bill. This bill is not about thinking or believing, but doing and harming. In fact, sine 1968 when a parallel federal hate crimes bill was passed, there has not been a single successful prosecution based on speech. There have also been none in the 45 states that have hate crimes laws.

The entire .pdf is worth downloading and reading. Just for the sake of clarity.

The civility conspiracy

Are we unconscious fellow travelers in the civility conspiracy? After all, we did write about the Interfaith Alliance civility letter, although it hit the political right and the political left alike.

The Interfaith Alliance is about religion, and former Reagan White House political director Jeffrey Lord argues at The American Spectator that there's a conspiracy of religious institutions and the FCC aimed at silencing talk radio and Fox.

Although it pretends to be about "hate speech" and its contributions to "hate crime."

Which is apparently not a concern for talk radio stars like Rush Lumbaugh, who has accumulated his own PolitiFact.com page. Not for Fox. Nor for the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land, who is preoccupied with finding and raising the alarum about echoes of Nazi philosophy he may contrive to find in Democratic discussion of health care reform. Nor is factual accuracy a concern for them or for Fact Free Land.

Even so, hyperventilating rhetoric and inaccuracy do concern some of the rest of us. Hence the call by the National Interfaith Coalition for Media Justice for an examination of the use of the public airwaves to foster incivility. They are [shudder] asking folks who agree with them to sign a petition [oh noes]:

As a participant, you will be asked to sign a petition to the Federal Communications Commission asking that it open a notice of inquiry into hate speech in the media. We will also urge the National Telecommunications and Information Agency to update its 1993 report, The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes.

Note the last two words: "Hate Crimes."

They're not calling for censorship. They want to know whether hate speech over the public airwaves is in fact giving rise to violence.

The petition-associated letter is of necessity specific. The most specific example it cites is strained. It says:

The possible correlation between hate speech and violent crime gives us great pause. Immigrant, minority, and religious populations are often targets of hate speech before they are subsequently the target of physical hate crimes. For example, in June 2006 four teenagers posed as federal agents and asked two Mexican men [on a jetty in Rocky Point, N.Y.] for their green cards. The teenagers then beat and robbed the two men, while accusing them of stealing jobs from U.S. citizens. This incident occurred after radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called Mexican immigrants [on March 27, 2006], regardless of legal status, “a renegade, potential crime element that is unwilling to work.” According to the most recent FBI hate crimes statistics, while hate crimes against all other groups have been holding steady or attenuating, hate crimes against Hispanics have been increasing over the last four years. Moreover, electronic media have a strong influence on children and teenagers since they are not yet fully developed cognitively.

The general issue has nonetheless attracted concern from several religious denominations, and Lord has by dent of hard work and considerable imagination spun together from their concern and the concern of others a conspiracy:

There is an organized campaign now afoot, a carefully planned, well-funded systematic assault on talk radio and Fox News that involves at least seven major liberal American religious denominations. All of whom are apparently planning to spread the gospel that talk radio and Fox News personalities are spreading hate speech. This message will be spread to their parishioners' children, in adult education materials, in sermons and through lay leaders -- people like me.

That conspiracy is very much like Richard Land's discovery of an attack on his First Amendment rights in objections to his use of Holocaust metaphors and allegations of budding Nazism to attack efforts to provide health insurance to people who need it. There was no such attack on Land's rights in this nation where some 45,000 people die a year for lack of appropriate health insurance. Censorship isn't afoot here. Allegations of censorship are being used as part of an effort to mask legitimate debate.