Why We Don't Need to Fear the Hate Crimes Prevention Act

So HR 1913, also known as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed last month almost without any media attention.

It expanded the definition of a prosecutable hate crime (from the original act in 1969) to include violent assaults because of sexual orientation and gender identification. Did I mention this is a bill that had been unable to get through congress for over ten years now? Yet, it went through now without hardly any debate and even less news coverage. The reason being that the bill was attached as a rider for funding the troops in Afghanistan and because President Obama let his pen do all the talking, making no speeches about it at all. Sneaky? Yes, but also very effective.

Since it was signed into law, some politicians and activists have of course expressed their…displeasure at this bill. However, what concerns me is that most vocal opponents have been Christians. Intuitively, it just seems odd that those who should be known by their love are protesting legislation that now adds special legal protection to a category of people who endure almost three hundred violent attacks a year because of hatred for their sexuality. As you might expect, the opposition gets dressed up in fancy and noble language, but most of the resistance has been based purely off fear-mongering myths. So very quickly, I’ll break them down since I could find no commentary on the net that has done otherwise.

Myth #1- The Hate Crimes Bill can now be used to criminalize a Christian’s ability to say homosexuality is wrong since someone may consider that hateful speech.

Why It Isn’t True- HR 1913 only criminalizes forms of violent assault, meaning insults don’t count as assault. Even if someone thought saying “homosexuality is wrong” was hate speech, hate speech is specifically protected under the First Amendment. Some Christians have cited pastors or Christians in other countries who have been arrested from saying homosexuality is a sin, however none of these countries have hate speech already protected as part of free speech. Furthermore, in the one local case in which four Christians in Philadelphia were convicted of violating a Pennsylvania hate crimes bill for disorderly protesting at a gay pride festival, a local judge immediately threw out the conviction as completely groundless and unconstitutional.

Myth #2- The Hate Crimes Bill will be used for double prosecution (double-jeopardy trials) by the federal government.

Why It Isn’t True- Not necessarily untrue, but highly unlikely and without precedent based on the enforcement of the similar 1969 bill. And if, ignoring the reasons why this can also be a good thing, for some reason it did happen in a repulsive way—all it takes is a quick and easily passable amendment to the bill.

Myth #3- The Hates Crimes Bill can now be used to protect pedophiles since pedophilia is a “sexual orientation”.

Why It Isn’t True- “Sexual orientation” as a term is already defined elsewhere in other federal documents as only including heterosexual or homosexual orientations, so this is the clear operating definition in HR 1913. Most of evidence is based off a Fort Lauderdale congressman, who is fond of wearing rainbow ties and who also made a speech requesting that all some thirty sexual “ishes” or “isms” (his words, not mine) should be protected under the bill. His speech then got incorrectly spun by some pundits that this was the actual language or implication of the bill, even getting cut on Youtube to indicate such. His request was never approved or supported. (Note: Fox News commentators also pushed an argument that pedophiles would be protected under some notion of them having a mental disease, but this charge had almost no grounds in logic at all and was eventually substituted with the sexual orientation reasoning.)

Now granted, this isn’t an endorsement of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. There are other more philosophical and justifiable reasons to be skeptical of it, but Christians need to stop embarrassing ourselves and our Savior by engaging in political rhetoric that is fear-based and highly misleading. Instead of pushing fear, let us hold each other accountable in pushing dialogue and an honest exploration of the evidence—especially in regards to such crucial issues of justice.

Switchfoot's Good Song and Glamour Shots

I've been a fan of the band Switchfoot since their Legend of Chin release way back when DC Talk and Jars of Clay dominated the Christian music scene. They've been one of the few old school Christian bands out there to have real staying power in this shining new era of Christian rock. Their new single, "Mess of Me" is well-written and has the classic Swithfoot agrresive catchiness that throws in a hint of musical chaos. The music video, however, is um, not what I expected for such a poignant song. Check it out for yourself. Glamour shots, anyone?

When an Atheist Reviews A Heaven-Backed Rebellion, And When Another Gets Patronizing

Usually, when a Secular Humanist reviews an unwavering Christian book, the result is not warm fuzzies.  However, last week Charleston City Paper columnist and vocal Secular Humanist, Will Moredock reviewed A Heaven-Backed Rebellion and was fairly kind to it—all things considered.  Granted, he still felt compelled to attack my support of the FairTax (which takes up mere 6 of the book’s 270 pages) and contend that non-Christian worldviews are credible alternatives for supplying moral momentum to the progressive movement, but it ends with an endorsement nonetheless.   You got to give a Secular Humanist credit for actually being as open-minded as they claim to be, so I appreciate him willing to dialogue with me.

Yet, perhaps the most interesting part of the review isn’t the review itself, but the commentary below the article, which also ended up being a letter to the editor the following week.  In it, Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry founder Herb Silverman interprets Moredock’s review to think I’m denying the authority of Scripture, saying that I “appear to focus on passages where God behaves like a secular humanist, and ignores the rest.” Other than demonstrating a two-dimensional and 19^th century understanding of the Bible, he gives an invitation for me to continue “on a slippery slope that will lead [me] to secular humanism” so that he can “welcome [me] into the fold”. 

Now, one could chalk this up to misunderstanding my analysis of examining of what issues the Bible emphasizes (i.e. it’s far more concerned with social justice than gay marriage) and some wishful thinking from our city’s most prominent “evangelical atheist”—it could then simply just be a case of a presumptuous atheist that enjoys being patronizing.  

It could be, except Herb Silverman knows who I am. 

Granted, my name might not be as memorable as his, but my friend Amanda says that “If, like you and some other guy were up for kinghood, I'd be like, even though we don't vote, I'd vote for him.  He's got the name for it."  That’s a decent name endorsement, right?

Besides, it’s not as if he simply knows of me, but never met me.  He’s watched me in a debate earlier this year talk about my love for Jesus, my passion for sharing the Gospel, and the connection of those things to my libertarian and liberal politics. For goodness sakes, we had dinner afterwards with him and his wife and I talked more about Jesus.  I’m not sure if he was either trying to pull a PR stunt for his atheist club or his brain really did just short-circuit the connection between Colin Kerr the Christian liberal at dinner and Colin Kerr the Christian liberal who is also an the author.     

Poor Herb.  His love letter is cute, but the man needs some Gingko Biloba.            

Richard Dawkins: Good Scientist, Bad Philosopher

Foxholes are unnecessary.  There are no atheists in the dentist’s chair.  That’s my theory at least. 

After getting four teeth drilled on the other day in Charlotte, I had the only slightly greater pleasure of driving my Novocain-paralyzed face down to Columbia, South Carolina to see the infamous Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist.  Dawkins, a British biologist, is part of the controversial neo-atheist movement.  Neo-atheism itself is a highly vocal, if not outright shrill, atheist philosophy that seeks to argue, insult, and humiliate believers of all stripes into abandoning their faith—or at least ostracizing and ejecting them out of having any cultural influence.  Dawkins’ last book and a key intellectual bulwark of this view, was politely named The God Delusion in honor of anyone moronic enough to have any belief of the divine.

I waited among thousands of students in Columbia with baited breath, for the neo-atheist circus ringleader to shock the crowd with resounding statements of intellectual superiority from his new science-oriented book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.  I anticipated enough fire and brimstone to replace a Bunsen burner. I was instead stunned to hear a soft-spoken English gentleman request that ministers, priests, and pastors live up to their responsibility as community leaders by educating their flocks about the reality of evolutionary truth. 

Dawkins rightly pointed out that many in clergy see no conflict between Darwinian evolution and their faith, but fail to make that clear to their congregations.  Using the story of Adam and Eve as an example, Dawkins conjectured that many preachers cite the story without thinking of it as 100% literal.  However, they do so without making those in the pews aware of this nuance.  This in turn leads to misinformed religious parents and students resisting a science curriculum at their school in the name of their faith, even though their pastor would have no qualms about it. 

In an odd sense of revelation, I felt spiritually convicted by this plea.  Many of us in ministry have been unwilling to address this controversial issue because we are unwilling to expose ourselves to the potential fallout.  It’s much easier to use the same words found in the opening of Genesis and allow for different meanings, especially when identifying those meanings may uproot deeply seated assumptions about the Genesis account.  So let me do my part in this.  I believe in Darwinian evolution—in essentially every sense that Dawkins would understand it—and I see no conflict between believing in that and believing in the inspired and authoritative Word of God.  Furthermore, I plan to publish a version of this blog to my congregation in the immediate future.  

I probably would go on longer about evolution and theology if it hadn’t been for Dawkins tangling himself in a web of strategic and philosophical contradictions the rest of the evening.  Strategically, it seems highly counterproductive for him asking religious leaders to help him out in his educational crusade shortly before returning to his usual rhetoric of labeling religion as: “a kind of virus of the mind”, suggesting God is a sadist, and roundly declaring that “if someone is getting their morality from the Bible, you don’t want to be around that person!” It shouldn’t come as any surprise then that clergy are so reluctant to promote the same science that often holds hands with rabid anti-spirituality.  But Dawkins can’t for the life of him figure out why. 

I wonder if Dawkins replayed the tapes of his own lecture would he answer his own question? 

Philosophically, Dawkins does more intellectual gymnastics than well, a gymnast, swinging from bold dictum to dictum without much logic connecting the points between.  Comically, Dawkins states that he is not the last gasp of Enlightenment thinkers, refusing to address the evidence that indicates neo-atheists are really “hyper-modernists” tenuously held together by the internet and a zealous faith in science.  Granted, that he “doesn’t follow the zeitgeist”, but does “notice the opinion polls”.  He concludes “We [atheism] are winning.” Yet, even accepting the juvenile terms of “winning” and “losing”, the reality is that this is only true in the United States and nowhere else in the world1.  In contrast to this, the Global South is exploding in religion, with Christianity at the forefront.  Christianity is still steadily flourishing in spite of the state-enforced secularism of China. Even in post-Christian Europe (where atheism was assumed to have already won), we are beginning to see a dedicated Christian resurgence (e.g. Holy Trinty Brompton)

Maybe it’s just me, but winning sure looks a lot like getting your ass kicked.  Sorry, I couldn’t help but phrase it that way. 

Yet, with less humor and more irony, he claims evolutionary psychology has no bearing on forming social norms between race and gender.  Defending himself to one questioner, he declared “You can do whatever the hell you like…you’re free!”  However, when responding to (deep breath) a secondhand straw-man question delivered by an atheist on whether a world of atheists would degenerate morally, Dawkins proclaims that an atheist society would be a good society.  Not only good, but that they “would do good for the sake of being good and not out of fear from some God, some cosmic spy camera, watching your every move and knowing your every thought.”  The linguistic assumptions he makes about the meaning of value-laden words are painfully evident.  The very concept of “good” is relative to individual perception in a atheistic worldview, so a world full of atheists doing whatever is “good” in their own eyes could range anywhere from helping end genocide in Africa to being the one perpetuating it. 

Not to mention I once heard a man once say (about ten minutes earlier) that when you’re free, “you can do whatever the hell you like”.       

Richard Dawkins reminds me a bit of Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family.  Not because they believe any of the same things.  It’s actually hard to imagine two people who might disagree more.  However, both share a unique commonality of being very good in one field only to find they may be overreaching into another field where they really don’t belong.  Dobson has some fine thoughts on child-rearing. He has mind-blowingly dubious (my friend Amanda wouldn’t let me use the word stupid) thoughts on politics.   Likewise, Dawkins is superb at explaining complex science in common vernacular.  He is woefully ill-suited for engaging in real philosophy beyond preaching to an atheist pep rally. 

Hopefully, his new book on evolutionary science is an indication that he intends to stay in field that God made him for.    

 

1. Crossman, Cathy L. "People With No Religion Gain on Major Denominations." Religion. USA Today, 22 Sept. 09. Web. /2009-09-22-no-religion_N.htm>.

  

 

My Top 3 Summer Flicks

It’s a summer of violence, at least for good movies, that is. Granted, no summer is spared the barrage of mindless action flicks, but my top three summer films are all heavy on the violence and light on just about everything else. I feel kinda bad about this, but hey, they’re pretty darn good. What would your top three be?

3. District 9—Contrary to popular belief, this is not an alien film, it’s an action film with aliens in it. It’s a movie that’s very creatively shot, thoughtful in its commentary on depravity on human nature (it’s it potential of redemption), and sets the stage for what could be very interesting sequel. Hopefully, films like this will embarrass the people who make crap like Transformers enough not to take up similar projects in the future.

2. The Hurt Locker—A fantastic, and little distributed, portrayal of the bomb disposal expert in Iraq during 2004. It’s a white knuckle-ride watching him fiddle around with bombs that you have very little assurance he’ll be able to disarm (given the movie’s opening sequence). I felt it painted the near-chaos that existed in Iraq during 2004 in a way I could have never imagined from just reading the news reports.

And....

1. Inglorious Basterds—Tarantino redeems himself with Basterds. I know, I know. Such a gory-guy flick. I left this movie thinking it was a no more than a good movie, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks and a handful of scenes were the source of many philosophical conversations at dinners to follow. Rarely do films create that kind of discussion fodder, but Basterds does it by having no true “good guys”. Instead, Tarantino creates a spread of amoral characters and a few likeable Nazis. Plus, Christopher Waltz, who plays the Nazi detective Hans Landa, is going to get an Oscar for his insanely twisted role.

Book Release Reception

So I'm finally having my book release extravaganza, thanks to the good folks at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park, home of the famous pineapple fountain. If you're living in Charleston, you've probably already gotten a facebook invite. If you didn't, I'm sorry, I don't like you.

Kidding. You're invited. Officially.

Drop by during the Charleston Artwalk on Friday, October 2nd, from 6pm-8pm for a glass of wine and viewing of the original painting by Irene Virag used for the cover.

Autographed (which I'm sure depreciates the value) books will be on sale for $15 with the old pre-release copies on sale for $5 (they make great paper weights I'm told). Hope to see you there.

Blank Slate

Sorry I’ve been out awhile (if any of you were actually hurting for an entry).  I’ve been writing sermons instead of blogs.

 So there’s been this young German woman who’s been going to my church for about a month now.  A friend of hers who went to the church while she was a college student dragged her to a service while she was visiting back in town.  I subsequently met her the next week at a party of lawyers and their clerks.

The first time she came alone I gave what was unquestionably my most fire and brimstone sermon ever.  Fire and brimstone at least for a self-declared emergent churchy type of guy—though who doesn’t love dressing up in 1920s big-tent revival garb and singing “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus”?  It’s probably because I’ve been listening to too much of Mark Driscoll.  Anyway, I was really curious as to what this German, who had practically zero understanding of Christianity, thought about a very old school message for repentance. 

 I met her for coffee to get her scholarly assessment and to my complete shock, she thought it was quote, “very nice.” 

 Very nice? I just said you were going to Hell. 

 “Oh, I thought that was just for the old people. You’re a very good speaker.” 

Well, thanks.  But for the old people?  I said about half dozen times and in a half dozen ways if you don’t have forgiveness for your sins exclusively from Jesus, you’re going to Hell. 

“Oh, yes, that really made sense. But Hell doesn’t really mean anything to me. I mean, I don’t really believe in it.”

So you’re not the least bit bothered about me saying you’re going to Hell?

“No. I thought it was nice message. And I like going to church.  I feel like I’m doing something good. I called my parents and told them, but they didn’t believe me.”

So basically, after a long and often confused conversation, I figured out that while logically, she understood the sermon perfectly, words like ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ held so little meaning to her as to effectively render them useless in discussing the Gospel.  Even the concept of sin, which I had discussed to decent degree in the sermon, was still practically a word without weight for her.  

Theologically speaking, she was about as close to tabula rasa as I’ve ever met since I did mission work across the pond in England.   I was really quite stunned, if not fascinated for that hour and half over coffee.

Would anyone like to help me draw a lesson from this?  I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but she keeps coming back.