Firm Foundation

A bill recently introduced in Congress, H.R. 254, seeks to include at the federal level ”sexual orientation” for protection in the the growing list of “hate crimes” laws.  Judge Moore’s column this week, What’s not to love about “hate crimes” laws?, explains how hate crimes laws make some crimes ”worse” than others by punishing the thoughts of the offender, not just his bad actions. As Judge Moore explains:

Historically and legally, it is not within the authority or jurisdiction of a judge to inquire into one’s thoughts or beliefs. Law is concerned with a man’s actions and not with matters of his heart. 

Hate crimes laws represent an intrustion into the mind that may remind us of the horrors of George Orwell’s fictional 1984—with its overbearing, brainwashing, “Big Brother” state—but more fundamentally such laws go beyond the authority of government ordained by God.  As Justice Joseph Story wrote:

The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as of revealed religion.

With such laws on the books, in Sweden, Canada, and here in America, Christians who dare to call homosexuality a sin condemned by the Bible have been arrested and persecuted.

The heart and conscience is the Father’s domain, not Big Brother’s. Speaking the truth in love should never be hateful, but neither should it be a hate crime.