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George Bush has threatened to veto hate speech legislation that would make it illegal to incite violence against people based on their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. One clue to this reluctance to protect disabled people is that Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, a former co-chair of the state's 2004 has ties to the Michigan State University Young Americans for Freedom. NOTE: Yeah, their website production values suck, but what can you expect from a conservative organization?
The MSU-YAF is responsible for such puerile shenanigans as the racist "Catch An Immigrant" game where they offer $100 to MSU students for turning in illegal immigrants. Pshaw, that paltry sum won't buy textbooks. And of course these are white frat brats, Caucasians whose ancestors were not native to America's shores, who are offering the reward. If the MSU-YAF doesn't like immigrants, they can go back to where their ancestors originated.
Technorati Tags:disability rights,hate speech,religious right

The Religious Right wants George W. Bush to veto the anti-hate speech law that has just been passed by the House. The evangelicals believe that the law will criminalize free speech about their aversion to homosexuality. In fact, the law will halt speech that directly leads to violence against people based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability. The law budgets ten billion dollars over the next two years to help local law enforcement, and authorizes federal authorities to participate in resolution of hate crimes. There is nothing wrong with this legislation because keeping society civil is the role of the government. Advocating violence toward anyone that causes unlawful acts based on race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability disturbs the peace of society.
Just look at what happened during the Third Reich where the rhetoric against disabled people led to thousands of disabled people being imprisoned and killed in places such as Hartheim Castle in Austria and the Hadamar Hospital in Wiesbaden Germany. What does the Religious Right want in promoting a veto of hate speech laws? Eugenics? Gas chambers? To play the devil's advocate (and I would never advocate any such violence), if the Religious Right doesn't like hate speech laws, they might as well send the hard-core Christians in wheelchairs to be euthanised first.
Morally, George W. Bush and his evangelical cohorts should not be proud of their veto of hate speech laws because negating such legislation affects those, the disabled, who deserve the same rights, the same legal protections against invective speech, and the same freedoms as the able-bodied.
Technorati Tags:disability rights,hate speech,religious right