There has been much controversy concerning the new Hate Crimes bill signed into law Wednesday by President Obama. You will find many articles and blog sites that herald the end of religious freedom from the pulpits of America’s churches. I logged on www.opencongress.org and reviewed the terms of the new Hate Crime bill for myself. The following is section 10 of the bill in which the religious freedom of speech issue is detailed in the language of the bill:
SEC. 10. RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.
For purposes of construing this Act and the amendments made by this Act the following shall apply:
(1) RELEVANT EVIDENCE- Courts may consider relevant evidence of speech, beliefs, or expressive conduct to the extent that such evidence is offered to prove an element of a charged offense or is otherwise admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Nothing in this Act is intended to affect the existing rules of evidence.
(2) VIOLENT ACTS- This Act applies to violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of a victim.
(3) CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration. The Constitution does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence.
(4) FREE EXPRESSION- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.
First of all notice in section 2 “Violent Acts” that the purpose of this bill is to bring conviction for persons committing violent acts “motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of a victim.“
The purpose of the bill as detailed here is protection for many groups of people, including those of faith, against violent acts committed against them for who they are, what they believe or how they live. The language is specific that prosecution under this bill is for violent acts committed, not for speech expressed against one of these groups.
Secondly, notice the specific language under section 3 “Constitutional Protections”, that “Nothing in this act shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected Speech, regardless of whether compelled by or central to a system of religious beliefs”.
This means that all of the skepticism over how this law would effect a pastor teaching from the Book of Romans chapter one where Homosexuality is spoken against, that pastor would find protection as a part of his free speech under this bill. I do not find anything here that would threaten the free exercise of a ministers speech to preach against the sin of homosexuality.
Section 4, “Free Expression” also reinforced this principle by stating that “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.”
I do not think that it can be any clearer as the intent of this bill is not to punish pastors for preaching the gospel or expressing the opinion of the Bible as he teaches the Word of God to his congregation. Unless there is some other language in the bill that would controvert the above language, then I can not see that this bill will have any effect whatsoever on the free speech of ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In fact, to some extent this bill seems to also bring protection to the speech of ministers by specifically defining the fact that they may make comments against “racial, religious, political, or other beliefs”. It appears to this writer that the fear that we had over the language of this bill is nothing to be feared and that all of the hoopla over this bill has been much-ado about nothing.