The House of Representatives voted yesterday 249-175 to expand federal hate crimes laws to include crimes that were motivated by the victim’s gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or disability. The bill also lifts the previous restriction that the victim had to be engaged in a federally protected activity when attacked, such as voting or attending school. Additionally, the bill expands federal assistance to state and local authorities for the investigation of suspected hate crimes.

The measure has yet to be taken up by the Senate. It has proven to be quite controversial, with the House vote coming in almost entirely along party lines. Religious Right organizations mobilized their constituents to speak out against the measure. Focus On the Family claims to be responsible for 5,000 messages to Congress against the bill.

Why is it controversial? Let’s look at a few of the objections to this legislation:

Representative of the Religious Right case against hate crimes laws is an editorial from today’s edition of the right wing newspaper the Washington Times, which concluded:

Once homosexuals become a special class protected by hate-crime legislation, the back door is open to prosecuting those who speak out against homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Yesterday’s House vote was really about creating thought crimes to further the liberal agenda.

That unsubstantiated assertion (that the bill creates “thought crimes”) was ominously illustrated with a photograph of George Orwell.

In a piece dripping with contempt towards the LGBT community, Matt Berber puts it in more drastic terms:

In short, this bill places newfangled “gay rights” in direct conflict with our enumerated constitutional rights. It becomes the first step in the official criminalization of Christianity. It’s a zero sum game and someone has to lose. Ultimately, what we lose are our First Amendment guaranteed rights to freedom of speech, religious expression and association.

Um…no. This is the often repeated lie of the Religious Right, but this simply isn’t the case. Let’s get a few things clear about this bill.

First, this is a hate crimes bill, not a hate speech bill. Commentator and attorney Glenn Greenwald explains the distinction:

Hate speech laws and hate crimes laws are entirely different, since the former punishes the pure expression of ideas while the latter involves the commission of actual crimes, usually quite violent and serious crimes. One can easily and coherently oppose the former but support the latter.

While critics have been drawing on cases from Europe where people were prosecuted only for what they said, what they are referring to are laws against hate speech, rather than hate crimes. Many countries in Europe have these kinds of laws; thankfully, the United States does not, because Congress cannot just legislate away the First Amendment. This bill does nothing to criminalize hate speech.

In fact, the language in the actual bill is clear that the defendent’s actions, not thoughts, are what will be on trial:

In a prosecution for an offense under this section, evidence of expression or associations of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense.

This law isn’t about punishing what the criminal thought; it’s about punishing what the criminal did. It does nothing to prevent a pastor from sermonizing against homosexuality from the pulpit, or for a newspaper to publish anti-gay editorials (don’t worry, Washington Times!), or anything relating to speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion. It does nothing to prevent religious activists from rallying against marriage equality. Anyone that tells you otherwise doesn’t understand the bill or is simply lying.

Another objection to the hate crimes bill is that, as an issue of fairness and equal protection, crime victims should not be treated any differently based on the motivation behind the crime. In other words the punishment should be the same for a criminal whether he committed assault because the victim was gay or because he wanted the victim’s wallet. This is reflected in the comments by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-TN, when he was speaking against the bill:

“All violent crimes must be vigorously prosecuted,” Smith said. “Unfortunately, this bill undermines one of the most basic principles of our criminal justice system — ‘equal justice for all.’”

“Justice will now depend on the race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or other protected status of the victim,” Smith said. “It will allow different penalties to be imposed for the same crime.”

What this argument fails to recognize is the particular threat that hate crimes have towards society. For one, when a person is attacked because he or she is identified as being part of a particular group, the attack is, in essence, against the entire group. For example, if racist graffiti was spray painted on the home of an African American family, would it not be clear that the action was taken to intimidate not only that particular family, but any other African American family in the area that may subsequently fear being victimized by a similar crime? The group of victims encompasses those that are given reason to fear after the attack. Hate crimes are a way of sowing terror among the particular group that is the target of hate. This is more detrimental to society than many other types of crimes, and the punishment for the perpetrator should reflect this accordingly.

The new hate crimes bill is, unfortunately, not going to end violence that is motivated by hatred. But it will give law enforcement and prosecutors additional tools to deal with these crimes and ensure that the criminals receive a just punishment.

There seems to be grade inflation going on at Americans United in terms of assessing President Obama’s first 100 days in office. They gave President Obama an A-; I’d give him a “C”. Here’s why:

First, I’m using a bottom-up approach — meaning Obama has to earn his grade rather than start with an A+ and have points deducted for missteps.

Certainly Obama has made some A-worthy moves (which I’ll omit for the sake of brevity). My problem is his infusion of religion into so many things, starting with the presidential inaugural ceremony when he added “so help me God” to the constitutional oath and prayers by Rev. Warren and Rev. Lowery. He’s made token shout outs to nonbelievers (like throwing bones without meat). Obama’s response to the Vatican’s rejection to his nominees has been pitiful. His goal to expand Bush’s faith-based initiatives is mind boggling. He’s waffled on the Freedom of Choice Act and religious discrimination in hiring. He’s appointed a religious czar (in Josh Dubois). His gratuitous acknowledgments to a god in his speeches makes me feel like an outsider.

In sum, these acts show me that President Obama is no friend of separation of church and state but, based on the (omitted) positives he’s no enemy either.

So in my grade book Obama’s at a C, and he’s got a LOT of homework to do to earn an A.

Obama is scheduled to give a promising speech on science today at the National Academy of Sciences pledging to devote 3 percent of our GDP to research and development, proclaiming: “We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the Space Race… This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history.”

I’m sure that my standards have been lowered by living through the last eight years, but this sort of talk is extremely promising:

Fourth, we are restoring science to its rightful place.

On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. Our progress as a nation – and our values as a nation – are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy.

That is why I have charged the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions – and not the other way around.

There isn’t much question to whom those comments were directed.  Two examples come to mind:

On Plan B (Washington Post April 23): “In his 52-page decision, Korman repeatedly criticized the FDA’s handling of the issue, agreeing with allegations in a lawsuit that the decision was ‘arbitrary and capricious’ and influenced by ‘political and ideological’ considerations imposed by the Bush administration.”

On greenhouse gasses (New York Times April 17): “Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that those gases caused such harm, but top Bush administration officials suppressed their work and took no action.  In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the findings were justified. The announcement Friday [April 17] was the fruit of that review.”

Beyond those cases, I would love to see science restored when it comes to:

• Sex-Ed classes (No more failed Abstinence-only classes)

• Curriculum’s on Evolution (No, there is no controversy)

• Stem-Cell research

Am I missing more?

A Religious Right legal organization has a message for county employees in Iowa: if you don’t like same-sex marriage, then don’t do your job! From the Iowa Independent.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a legal advocacy group founded in 1994 by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the late Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, sent an e-mail to each of Iowa’s county recorders asking them to tell their staff that they “shall not be required to issue or process a marriage license, or to perform, assist or participate in such procedures, against that individual’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

They’re asking county recorders to defy the recent Iowa State Supreme Court ruling that enforces marriage equality, with ADF Senior Legal Counsel Doug Napier saying, “Government employees who believe in marriage as the union of one man and one woman should not be penalized for abiding by their beliefs.”

See a problem with this reasoning? The First Amendment guarantees your freedom to believe and worship as you wish without government interference. But I’ve said it here before, and it’s worth repeating: religious freedom does not mean the freedom to not do your job. Some beliefs can be accommodated in the workplace, others cannot; if your job is to issue marriage licenses, your desire to issue them only to certain types of people is discriminatory and cannot be accommodated.

The State Attorney General sees it that way:

Attorney General Tom Miller has repeatedly warned county recorders that they do not have the authority to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and “recorders do not have discretion or power to ignore the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling,” Miller said.

Can you imagine what life in the United States would be like if government employees could ignore court rulings at will? What if a school principal tried to ignore Brown v. the Board of Education because desegregation would supposedly be against his or her conscience? What if county recorders simply refused to issue marriage licenses to nonreligious or interracial couples? What if a Catholic county recorder refused to issue marriage licenses to divorcees?

We can’t go down that road. The government can’t step in and force you to believe or not believe something. But when you’re on the clock, you do your job. Any county recorder or staff member in Iowa that refuses to abide by the Supreme Court ruling should be fired.

On Friday the Environmental Protection Agency formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be “pollutants that endanger public health and welfare.” In the decision that should lead to the regulation of these gases for the first time in the U.S., the EPA called the evidence “compelling and overwhelming.”

This decision has been long delayed, and the fact that it finally happened now is a testament to how the Obama administration is different from its predecessor. As reported in the New York Times:

In 2007, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., ordered the agency to determine whether heat-trapping gases harmed the environment and public health. The case was brought by states and environmental groups to force the E.P.A. to use the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping gases in vehicle emissions.

Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that those gases caused such harm, but top Bush administration officials suppressed their work and took no action.

In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the findings were justified. The announcement Friday was the fruit of that review.

It’s almost as if our government cares about science! My cynicism melted for a few minutes there.

But it came back in a hurry. Scientific evidence might overwhelmingly agree that high levels of carbon dioxide endanger public health, but not everyone in government is on board. Rep. John Boehner went on ABC’s This Week on Sunday and had this gem:

BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.

Two quick notes: I don’t think anyone has claimed carbon dioxide is a carcinogen, only that in large quantities it has a negative impact on our health. Also, while I suppose cows exhale carbon dioxide like we do, Boehner’s euphemism implies that he’s referring to methane, not carbon dioxide. But these are minor corrections alongside the glaring logical flaw.

Boehner pointed out that carbon dioxide is one of our waste products. How is this evidence that it’s not harmful in large quantities? Humans also defecate, but I don’t want a corporation dumping solid waste in my water.

Rep. John Shimkus is better known for using Genesis to inform his environmental policy, but he also had this stunning line of reasoning: “It’s plant food … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.”

Boehner must belong to the Shimkus school of thought. It unfortunately seems to be growing.

Humanists are often accused of practicing cultural relativism because our morality isn’t grounded in either an ancient sacred text or an omnipotent and watchful god. This is untrue. Humanists recognize that ethical values originate in our experiences as human beings. And these values are, as the third version of the Humanist Manifesto states, tested against experience.

It feels a little ridiculous to me that many religious people are so insistent that an ambiguous and contradictory ancient text such as the Bible is necessary to live a good life. I don’t doubt that there may be some insight in there on the subject. But there is plenty of insight in Plato’s writings on Socrates too.

The truth is, this planet of 6.5 billion people has been patching together its ethics from a variety of sources over the centuries, and whether people recognize it or not, a lot of this comes directly from human need and experience. That most humanistic of ethical aphorisms, the Golden Rule (also known as the Ethic of Reciprocity), appears in ancient Greek philosophy and can be found in nearly every major religion. Its universality suggests that over the centuries, humans have tested it against experience and found it to be both useful and desirable.

Humanism historically has relied on the dictate that every individual human being must be treated as having “inherent worth and dignity” (a phrase also taken from the third version of the Manifesto). I read this phrase as having, on the one hand, some roots in the Golden Rule, because we would all like to be treated as having inherent worth and dignity; we would like our humane treatment of others to be reciprocated to ourselves. But treating people this way has a value in and of itself that needs no further justification. It is the recognition of the solidarity of the human species and a rejection of the very relativism humanists are often accused of. It’s like this: human beings deserve humane treatment by virtue of being human; we have no godlike powers to determine who is worthy of humane treatment and who is worthy of being treated as being less than human.

Unfortunately, the recent revelations about the depth of the Bush administration’s torture regime have been distorted through a lens of debate over whether or not the torture was actually effective at producing useful intelligence. The implication (often stated) is that if torture was effective–if any useful intelligence came out of it–then the program would be defensible, that the torture would have been worthwhile.

And people accuse humanists of practicing relativism!

International law is clear on the subject: torture is illegal. It comes down to humanist ethics–there is a way that all humans must be treated simply by virtue of being human. This is the foundation of liberal democracy. It is why the Bill of Rights and international human rights law both spend a great deal of time outlining how those accused of crimes must be treated. There is no provision that criminals (and terrorists) suddenly forfeit all of their rights as human beings because they are accused of a crime.

So debating over whether or not torture “works” is missing the point. The necessary information should have been obtained using lawful techniques of interrogation. The terrorists may behave in a brutal fashion, but isn’t that precisely why we oppose them? Is a world in which brutality is countered with brutality what we desire?

I take comfort in President Obama’s assurances that torture will not be practiced by his administration. But we can’t “move forward” (to use the president’s words) without ensuring that justice is delivered to those responsible for torture.

The Obama administration can’t quite seem to get its act together when it comes to separation of church and state.

During Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, we were told that he was “with us” because he had been a Constitutional Law professor (thus inferring that he supported the Jefferson-Madison interpretation of the Establishment Clause). Unfortunately, Obama has been a disappointment as savior of the original intent of the religion clauses of the Bill of Rights.

First, instead of abolishing George W. Bush’s department of religion (a.k.a. White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives) Obama renamed it the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP) and expanded it! Next Obama backed off his campaign pledge to end religious discrimination in hiring by OFBNP grant recipients. Instead, the White House legal counsel and the Department of Justice are reviewing this matter, which has been deemed too hot to handle for the 25-member President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Instead, the council, composed primarily of persons from the religious community, is being charged with studying fatherhood, interreligious dialogue, global poverty, economic recovery, and the environment/climate change.

Now wait a minute. The first two task forces–on fatherhood and interreligious dialogue–seem likely to promote religion. Global poverty sounds like a job for the State Department. Economic recovery is the responsibility of the Treasury and Commerce departments (and perhaps others). And the environment/climate change is a task for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Surely, none of the council members are experts in the fields of finance or science. Are these committees going to serve as shadow departments that will impart a religious spin?

My recommendation to President Obama is simple: abolish the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and let religious groups compete for federal grants, applying goals-based criteria and providing services in a manner consistent with the First Amendment. What a wonderful world that would be.

Roy Moore was once the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He’s most famous for putting up a 5,000-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments in his courthouse and then refusing to remove it.

The typical excuse given for such monuments is that they merely honor the historical significance of the Ten Commandments. Moore made no such claims, openly admitting (pdf) that the monument was meant to reflect “the sovereignty of God over the affairs of men” and “acknowledge[s] God’s overruling power over the affairs of men.”

After the courts ruled that he was violating the establishment clause, Moore defied the law and stubbornly kept the monument up. He was removed from office for it.

You might think that being removed from office would be a chastising experience. But no, he decided to capitalize on the attention and run for governor of Alabama in 2006. He lost badly.

You might also think that getting only 33% of the vote and losing 2-1 would be a similarly chastising experience. But no, he’s considering running for governor again.

“Right now I’m very inclined to enter. I feel there is a need, and I feel I’m well qualified for the position,” Moore said.

I don’t think I need to spend much time explaining why this is ridiculous. A governor’s responsibility is to enforce the laws of the legislature, as interpreted by the judicial branch. Moore has already shown that he doesn’t respect the authority of the judicial branch – that’s why he got kicked out of office. He’s also shown that he considers the legislative branch to be second to the authority of God.

I have no problem if Roy Moore wants to be a clergyman. But he has no respect for our secular government and should have no part in it.

(Crossposted at Friendly Atheist)

The Pew Forum is a reliable source of interesting surveys. This most recent one shows how strongly various religious groups believe that global warming is occurring and if so, whether the warming is caused by humans or not.

One number that does puzzle me is the 36% of Black Protestants who believe the Earth is warming, but due to natural patterns and not human activity. It’s twice that of the US population as a whole, and triple that of the unaffiliated. Why would that be?

But otherwise, the findings don’t surprise me. The most likely group to believe that humans are causing a global warming? Those unaffiliated with a religion, at 58%. Those least likely? The self-identified White evangelical Protestants, at 34%.

I’m guessing there are confounding factors – White evangelical Protestants are more likely to live in the South, so perhaps it’s their geographic location that causes them not to believe the Earth is warming instead of their faith. It’s a classic correlation vs. causation conundrum.

But I don’t think we can dismiss the notion that faith affects people’s environmental views. Not when we have examples like Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) who read from Genesis in a congressional hearing and proclaimed that “The Earth will end only when God declares it is time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth, this Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”

On the other hand, we have to ask: why are these Hong Kong Christians building a full-scale replica of the ark?

There are some things I don’t like about American culture, but stories like this one in the Times Online really make me glad to live here:

A group of Afghan women who braved an enraged mob yesterday to protest against an “abhorrent” new Afghan law had to be rescued by police from a hail of stones and abuse.

The protest by about 200 women, unprecedented in recent Afghanistan history, was directed at the Shia Family Law passed last month by the Afghan parliament which appears to legalise marital rape and child marriage.

The rally, staged by mostly young women with their faces exposed, was a highly inflammatory act of defiance in a country as conservative as Afghanistan. It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a rapidly expanding mob threatened to swamp the demonstrators as they tried to approach the Afghan parliament.

The Times Online article quotes supporters of the law:

Those in favour of the new law chanted “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates.” At one stage both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women” — reflecting their starkly different interpretations of the new law.

“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran,” said Nesa Naseri, a female student of Sharia Studies who took part in the women’s counter-demonstration.

“This law does not approve rape, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.”

If “loyalty of the wife to husband” implies that she must have sex with him when he demands, I’m thinking the word ‘rape’ is appropriate. It might also have something to do with the statistic quoted in the Times Online article that 57% of all Afghan brides are under the age of 16. By the way, in the first line the word ‘abhorrent’ is in quotes because that was President Obama’s reaction to the bill. I’m with him.

New Development:

In an article today entitled “Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai vows to change Afghan marital rape law“:

KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that the controversial law permitting men to rape their wives will be changed.

…

The law has drawn international criticism, and Karzai’s comments came a day after several hundred protesters demonstrated against it. Critics say the law bars women from opting out of sex, effectively legalizing marital rape.

The measure applies to the 20% of Afghans who are Shiite Muslims. It was part of a massive piece of legislation aimed at bolstering the nation’s Shiite minority.