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 News from Around the Americas | August 2007 
Anti-Hate Debate Shifts to Gays
 Howard Witt - Chicago Tribune
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| | Expansion of law opposed on grounds of free speech. |
Houston, TX - Back in April, despite everything he had gone through, it looked as if David Ritcheson was finally going to get a happy ending.
The 18-year-old high school senior from suburban Houston had been assaulted in 2006, apparently targeted because he was Mexican American, by two youths who tried to carve a swastika into his chest, burned him with cigarettes and kicked a plastic tube from a patio umbrella into his rectum, rupturing his internal organs.
But after 30 surgeries and months in the hospital, Ritcheson had healed enough to testify before Congress in favor of expanding the federal hate crimes law to cover more victims and make it easier for the Justice Department to investigate such cases.
Less than three months later, however, Ritcheson was dead. Still tormented by his ordeal, he committed suicide by jumping from a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico on July 1.
And the hate crimes law Ritcheson had pushed for has collided with a controversy that had nothing to do with him: the nation's cultural fight over legal rights for homosexuals. The legislation, passed by the House and pending in the Senate, faces opposition from conservatives, some religious leaders and the White House.
Many of the critics oppose a provision that would extend the federal hate crimes law, which applies to crimes motivated by racial, religious or ethnic bias, to include violence against victims based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
"This divides America, by making some groups more important than others," said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas.
Preaching hate?
Conservatives across the country have been trying for nearly two decades to block the expansion of legal rights for gays, usually citing moral or religious grounds. But now opponents of the proposed law are raising a new argument: that the law could muzzle the freedom of conservative religious leaders to speak out against homosexuality.
They contend a preacher could be criminally liable if a follower were to commit a crime against a gay person after listening to a sermon denouncing homosexuality.
"What I'm talking about is my right to preach what I believe," said Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md.
"We preach love and acceptance, but I don't believe the Bible condones gay lifestyles. Yet the way these laws would be invoked would be that whoever is a commander or director of this kind of action can be brought up on the same charges as the actual perpetrator of a crime."
'It's not about speech'
Proponents of the expanded hate crimes law dismiss such concerns as exaggerations and say that nothing in the legislation would infringe on freedom of speech.
"For ministers to say that on Sunday morning they are going to get arrested because they make a speech against homosexuality is an unfair assessment of the law," said Martin Cominsky, Houston regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It's not about thought, it's not about speech. The law only comes into bearing against someone who takes a violent action."
Current federal law adds a sentence increase of up to life in prison for violent crimes motivated by only racial, religious or xenophobic bias, and it limits the involvement of federal investigators to cases involving victims who were engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting, when they were attacked.
The bill, approved 237-180 by the House, and the similar measure pending in the Senate, would extend coverage for gay victims and broaden the circumstances under which state authorities could seek assistance from the FBI and the Justice Department in hate crime investigations.
Emotional scars linger
The latter provision was the reason Ritcheson said he decided to testify before Congress. Ritcheson apparently was targeted because he was Hispanic, not gay, but his case didn't qualify for federal intervention because the assault occurred at a private residence.
Ritcheson's two assailants were convicted of aggravated sexual assault for the April 2006 attack. One attacker received a life sentence; the second was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
Ritcheson sounded optimistic about his future during his April testimony, telling the House committee that "my best days still lie ahead of me."
But there were signs that the teenager, who spurned counseling after the attack, remained scarred by his ordeal. Ritcheson told the Houston Chronicle that he continued to feel degraded by the attack and the description of him as the "pipe assault victim."
"I shouldn't care what people think," he said. "But it's like everyone knows I'm 'the kid.' I don't want to be a standout because of what happened."
Civil rights groups say that kind of long-lasting humiliation is felt by many hate crime victims. And it's why proponents say the federal hate crimes law should be expanded to cover attacks against gays.
"Hate-motivated violence against members of the gay, lesbian and transgender community continues to be a pervasive problem in this country," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest gay-rights groups lobbying for the federal hate crimes law.
"But there's nothing in this legislation that says that an individual's freedom of speech would in any way be curtailed." |
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