Taking the Pro-Hate Stance

In April, in a great stride for civil rights and a humiliating blow to hatemongering fundamentalists, the Hate Crimes Prevention Bill passed the House and was sent on to the Senate. It was a Pyrrhic victory of sorts, as it came too late for Duanna Johnson, Angie Zapata and many others.

Like a high school gym teacher lecturing about that not-so-fresh-feeling, Bryan Fischer can’t seem to let the much-contested bill finally reach maturity without some unhelpful, unnecessary, and embarrassingly inaccurate commentary.

He claims that when “Democrats voted down a proposed amendment that would exclude pedophilia from the list of ‘sexual orientations’”, the bill became a vehicle for the protection of pedophiles. In fact, he says that it “has become widely known as ‘The Pedophile Protection Act.’”

[Note to Bryan: “widely known” is not the same as “between you, your economic dependents, and some guy you cornered at the supermarket the other day who couldn’t wait to pay for his six-pack and get the hell out of there”. In slightly wider circles--such as Wikipedia--the bill is known as The Matthew Shepard Act.]

Of course no one voted to “exclude pedophilia.” That would equivalent to someone standing up at a gathering of conservationists and stridently demanding that cockroaches be taken off the Endangered Species List. They don’t have to be removed because they were never on the list.

Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation. It’s a crime. Gay sex is not a crime. Putting them in the same category implies association in order to prove guilt.

Bryan goes on to say that hate crime legislation is fundamentally misguided because “it violates the fundamental principle of American justice that we all are equal before the law” and “penalize[s] thought, not behavior”. To the former, the editors point out that this is yet another sad and silly attempt to cast the gay rights movement as the big bad bullies tormenting the virtuous underdogs. This is not the case. Even as civil liberties are expanded and the country seems, slowly and with great effort, to be turning away from the violent and hateful aspects of its history, people like Bryan Fischer remain powerful and influential, and people like Rodney Whitaker are not. And if Bryan was murdered for being white, Christian and hetero, it would be a hate crime and would rightly be prosecuted as such under the so-(rarely) called "Pedophile Protection Act".

To the latter point, we argue that, much like laws against premeditated murder, it penalizes reified thought. Think your hate all you want, Bryan, no one will prosecute you. Act on it in the brutal and specialized manner that characterizes hate crimes, and damn straight you’ll pay for it.