Pam Spaulding shares the latest from the Traditional Values Coalition — a pro-hate crime flier made up to look like a "wanted" poster of Jesus Christ.
The TVC doesn't explicitly call itself "pro-hate crime," but the flier expresses their opposition to anti-hate-crime legislation, and to avoid the unwieldy "anti-anti-" prefix, the English language supplies us with the logically apt and more convenient prefix "pro."
The flier says penalizing hate crimes based on sexual orientation "begins to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute and persecute pastors and other Christians whose actions are based upon, and reflect, the truths found in the Bible."
Their assumption seems to be, in other words, that Christian pastors are, in the normal course of their work, routinely engaged in violence against people they perceive to be gay. The TVC is run by Lou Sheldon, a self-declared Christian pastor. He may be homophobic, but I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it if he had spent the decades since his ordination routinely assaulting homosexuals.
So what on earth is he talking about?
The anti-anti-, i.e., pro-hate-crime talking point favored by Sheldon and his colleagues on the religious right is the idea that this will somehow lead to pastors being thrown into jail for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. It's a "slippery-slope" argument that has no basis — and doesn't claim any basis — in the text of the law itself. Nor does it have any basis in experience: Hate crime laws pertaining to racist motives are already on the books, yet none of the racist CHINO pastors still preaching their "curse of Ham" blasphemies has ever been prosecuted. Bob Jones III is still a free man.
So is Lou Sheldon dumb enough to believe his own slippery silliness, or is he just being dishonest to further his political agenda? Hard to say. But any question that begins with "is Lou Sheldon dumb enough …" I'm inclined to answer yes.
(Also from over at House Blend: This post from Pam reminded me of this lovely artwork from Rupert Garcia.)
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