Hate Crimes Legislation-can someone give me a rundown of status?

[liveoaktx]

I received an email this morning from a religious group asking to tell govt to vote against it because "This bill would censor ANY DISCUSSION or debate about same-sex marriage or special rights, even teaching children the homosexual lifestyle is wrong and sinful would put you at risk of prosecution. This amendment would even designate comments supporting traditional values AND even parts of the Bible as "hate speech" - a crime punishable by fines and even jail! "

I can't find in looking on the internet anything about the Smith Amendment 3183 aside from http://www.capwiz.com/apha/issues/votes/?votenum=114&chamber=S&congress=1082

So, 2 questions: Where, in what document, is a hate crime defined? It doesn't appear to be in the amendment above (tacked into the Department of Defense Authorization Act)which only specifies whether federal monies would be available for those states/etc who prosecute hate crimes. Second, this did pass the Senate this last week, so does it go back to the House at this point?

There are a lot of people (as usual) cc'd on this email which is short on facts, so I'd like to clarify it quickly.

[nostamj]

1. it passed in the Senate.

sorry I don't have more info than that.

[cosmicdot]

2. hope you find what you're looking for ... why not ask whatever 'religious

group' which has you on their email list the same questions??


http://www.hrc.org
using the search function at the top of the page: type in "hate crimes"

http://www.aclu.org
search function at bottom of page: type in "hate crimes"


http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=hate+crimes
has many links

"Angeles reminds us that crimes once driven solely by hatred for one's race now stem from opposition to one's religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation."

hate crimes involve the basic protection of civil/human rights which others would deny and abuse

[liveoaktx]

3. Thanks for links-found that the ACLU was also against the Smith

amendment, which passed the Senate. http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=15943&c=42

If I'm reading this correctly, one could be prosecuted for hate speech as well as the actual hate acts of violence. Haven't yet found the actual text of the Smith amendment.