Hate Crimes Bills and Churches

[hamiltonpl]

NACo | Find a County (http://www.naco.org/Template.cfm?Section=Find_a_County&Template=/cffiles/counties/state.cfm&statecode=la - broken link)

[Pathwalker]

Originally Posted by urbanlemur

In Sec. 2 toward the top of the page, it states under number 3, the term local , which is used throughout the bill, means a county, city, town, township, parish, village, or other general purpose political subdivision of a State.

What I heard this means is that even a pastor can be held liable if they speak about the sins listed in Scripture.

Like Hamiltonpl alluded to, there is no way the government is going to tell a church it can't preach something it believes, because not only would that be a violation of Free Speech, but it would be a violation of the separation of church and state because it would mean the government was essentially interfering with what a religion believes. That could be construed as the government establishing a religion. If something like that would happen, I think there would be a major revolt in this country and a constitutional crisis.

[magellan]

"Motivation" for committing heinous crimes is always taken into consideration, even before "hate-crime" legislation. It can mean the difference between negligent homicide, murder I and pre-meditated murder. Saying that motivation should not be a factor in how a crime is prosecuted does not follow the litmus test used by the judicial system.

Prosecuting a crime more severely based on the "motivating" factor is and has always been done. Only certain classes have been added to the motivation definition.