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Friday 22 May 2009

The Right – on rights

You’ve gotta laugh. We think we’ve got it bad in the UK with our religious right – such as the nasty Christian Institute we spoke of yesterday – but this blog is worth a look.

The blog is called Hatewatch, and it keeps an eye on the radical Right.

“Once Again the Religious Right Lies About Hate Crimes Law”, says its headline above a post about the Illinois Family Institute and its wacky claims.

It goes on to talk about a “proposed new federal hate crimes law [that] would allow prosecution of crimes motivated by bias against homosexuality or ‘gender identity’, among other characteristics, and provide funding for the feds to go after hate criminals who local authorities fail to investigate or prosecute”.

But in their alternate universe, religious-right anti-gay groups have seized upon the act’s language protecting Americans of all “sexual orientations” to claim that it’s all a stealth operation aimed at legally protecting people with deviant sexual fetishes, including necrophilia and bestiality.

The legislation says no such thing, says the website. Even after being contacted by a group that keeps a watch on such propaganda, the Illinois nutjobs issued a correction, but did’t take the offending piece off their website, or bother to edit it!

The piece goes on to tear apart the arguments of the hatemongers, and it’s worth reading, rather than that I try to précis it here.

You’ll either laugh or seethe.
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Hat tip: Stuart Hartill of Clinging to a Rock.

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