A pro-family organization is warning
that ‘hate crime’-related legislation introduced on Capitol Hill could
potentially squash free speech and create a “thought-controlled society.”
In mid-April, Senator Edward J.
Markey (D-MA) introduced a bill authorizing the government to monitor and
analyze speech online, on television, and over the radio … with the aim of
classifying it as ‘hate speech’ under the government’s own vague guidelines … and
then possibly charging the ‘offenders’ with a ‘hate crime.’
The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 (S. 2219) would create a
comprehensive report of internet and other telecommunications speech regarding
gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It would also create recommendations to
address such crimes.
If S. 2219 becomes law, it would be
“a really big step toward a police state,” says Patrick Vaughan, general
counsel for the American Family Association
(AFA). “What they propose to do is capture and
monitor everything that’s said on broadcast or everything that’s said on the internet;
they’re going to grab it all,” the attorney describes. “Then they're going to analyze it to see if
there might be something going on that would lead to a crime in the future.”
Senator Markey’s fellow New York
Democrat, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, has introduced a companion bill in the
House (H.R. 3878). Jeffries says such
legislation is necessary to “comprehensively evaluate the scope of criminal and
hateful activity on the internet that occurs outside of the zone of 1st Amendment
protection.”
But Vaughan says such legislation
could have a chilling effect on groups like AFA. “This gives a tool to the government so [they
can punish] anybody that disagrees with them,” he states bluntly. “Their speech will be captured and monitored
and then punished if the government thinks that it might at some point in the
future lead to a crime.” And that’s a
problem, concludes the attorney, because “normally the police don’t get
involved until a crime has been committed.”
OneNewsNow columnist Robert Knight describes the legislation as a “hare-brained
plan” and points out that even liberal commentator Alan Colmes opposes it.
Think about the implication for
pastors (such as myself) who will not compromise the proclamation of God’s Word
as absolute truth. I can tell you right
now, with the reproduction of over 300-DVD sermon titles of my preaching over
the past 6-years, it would be easy for today’s humanists to take any number of
my recordings out of context and falsely accuse me of ‘hate speech.’ Such a charge would, of course, call into
question the 1st Amendment right to freely exercise one’s religion without government
interference.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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