Friday, July 3, 2009

Might As Well Call It the Michael Jackson Act

Bills currently (as of the last full week of June) are making their way through the House and Senate that would create federal protection under hate crime statutes for pedophiles. It was originally intended to bring homosexuals under the 1994 act protecting different races and religions, but liberal congressmen and women have included language that protects 547 different kinds of sexual behaviors including incest and pedophilia.

That means that if Mr. Smith finds out that his son was molested by a sexual predator and he hits him with a Louisville Slugger, he will be subject to assault and battery under his state laws and federal hate crimes prosecution as well. He might spend more time in prison than the sex offender.

Republican attempts to specifically exempt incest, pedophilia, and other acts not involving two consenting adults were rebuffed by Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and other House Democrats. Even specific child protection language was stricken from the proposed bill.

Luckily the bill could run into a filibuster conducted by Senate Republicans and conservative Democrats. As it is, the law is flawed.

Hate crimes legislation, quite honestly, is a violation of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. We need to stop looking into the psychology of the criminal act so much and simply punish all violent crimes to a strong extent. The identity of the victim should not be written into a statute as some kind of required factor in sentencing or prosecution. Federal hate crimes prosecutions after the fact of a state prosecution of a violent crime is an end run around the "double jeopardy" clause in the Constitution.

It is interesting that liberal Democrats have seen fit to put simple, regular homosexuality on the same legal level as pedophilia, incest, or some of the other listed behaviors such as zoophilia, and stuff you wouldn't really want to consider. I imagine that a lot of homosexuals would be deeply offended by this stunt of adding incest and pedophilia to their protection bill.

No comments:

Post a Comment