Saturday, March 21, 2015

Hate Crime Unlimited


The last time I was a candidate for office in 1997, although it was the third time I had been a candidate, my youngest had moved here to San Luis Obispo County.  She had long before let us know that she was a lesbian.  That required that the two of us should have a really down to earth talk.  We both of us recognized that if we did not get out ahead of the media with her lesbianism, someone, somewhere would try to make it an issue.  At the same time, we did not want to make it a hot-button issue ourselves.  Therefore, we decided that I should comment truthfully if the subject came up, but certainly not try to “hide” it.  It so happened that there was an incident in South County where she and her then partner were shopping where someone stopped them and was really quite disgustingly rude.  The incident so infuriated our other locally living daughter that she wrote a great letter to the editor about it.  That, needless to say, surfaced the issue quite nicely, although we were sorry the incident happened in the first place.
 
Our family was very supportive of our daughter marrying her partner of 18 years, because we love that woman very much as well.  We had the wedding ceremony, and a small reception here at the house.  They had a much bigger whoop-de-do later in the year.  And we still support them, and their friends who are in same-sex relationships, as we do all in any committed marital relationship, same-sex or not.
 
You can imagine our horror and absolute freak-out anger this morning as we read in The Tribune, our local county paper, that some lawyer, Matt McLaughlin, in Orange County has paid his $200 fee to get his “Sodomite Suppression Act” which authorizes the killing of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head” or any “other convenient method”.  From The Tribune:  [“McLaughlin’s plan refers to “buggery” or “sodomy” as “a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.”  Under the proposal, “any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification (would) be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”]  This in itself is bad enough but one could assume that this would be after a legal trial, with lawyers on both sides, and decent judges.  But then there is:
 
f) The state has an affirmative duty to defend and enforce this law as written, and every member of the public has standing to seek its enforcement and obtain reimbursement for all costs and attorney's fees in so doing, and further, should the state persist in inaction over 1 year after due notice, the general public is empowered and deputized to execute all the provisions hereunder extra-judicially, immune from any charge and indemnified by the state against any and all liability.
 
Think about this for a moment.  If the State of California rightly drags its feet on this, then after a year, if I were seen with any of my daughters or female friends, and we gave each other a big hug on parting, conceivably some religious whack job could haul out his/her gun and shoot us in the head, using the excuse that it was obvious we were just getting ready for “sexual gratification”.  And get away with it!  This is not free speech.  If it is illegal to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre, then it is certainly a hate crime to advocate shooting people in the head extra-judicially, and with immunity for the actions!  
 
I used to wonder about not using the name of God in vain, the 4th Commandment, considering that OMG is such a frequent and wonderful expletive.  I think rather it refers to using God’s name to justify evil, as this lawyer from Orange County is doing.  For a Christian to use what a Christian believes is God’s Word to justify such hate, in direct contradiction to what is taught in the Christian Bible is about as blasphemous as one can get, in my opinion.  What a travesty of the Great Commandments of Jesus:  Love God with all of your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.  Using a reverse logic, if this man hates his neighbor to this extent, he must really hate himself!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

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