{"id":928,"date":"2009-06-15T17:37:25","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T17:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html"},"modified":"2009-06-15T17:37:25","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T17:37:25","slug":"the-freedom-to-violently-attac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html","title":{"rendered":"The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Coral Ridge Ministries is working hard to defeat the &#8220;Hate Crimes&#8221; legislation being considered in Congress. A recent email declared:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;If we don&#8217;t stop it now, it will become law, and that will mean a loss of liberty for Christians who stand up for the biblical truth that homosexual conduct is sin.&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The bill, they&#8217;re implying, would criminalize anyone who talks about Biblical injunctions against homosexuality. In other words, they seem to be conflating &#8220;hate speech&#8221; and &#8220;hate crimes.&#8221;<br \/>\nI&#8217;m really baffled by this.  <a href=\"http:\/\/thomas.loc.gov\/cgi-bin\/query\/z?c111:S.909:\">I just read the legislation <\/a>and unless I&#8217;m missing something, the law protects gays against <em>physical violence<\/em> and has nothing to do with hate <em>speech.<\/em><br \/>\nSpecifically, it creates a federal crime if the assailant attempts to or &#8220;willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device&#8221; on the basis of sexual orientation (as well as race, gender, national origin or &#8220;perceived or actual religion&#8221;).<br \/>\nIs this really what religious conservatives want to be focused on: blocking a law that prevents <em>violence<\/em> on the basis of sexual orientation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coral Ridge Ministries is working hard to defeat the &#8220;Hate Crimes&#8221; legislation being considered in Congress. A recent email declared: &#8220;If we don&#8217;t stop it now, it will become law, and that will mean a loss of liberty for Christians who stand up for the biblical truth that homosexual conduct is sin.&#8221; The bill, they&#8217;re&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Coral Ridge Ministries is working hard to defeat the &#8220;Hate Crimes&#8221; legislation being considered in Congress. A recent email declared: &#8220;If we don&#8217;t stop it now, it will become law, and that will mean a loss of liberty for Christians who stand up for the biblical truth that homosexual conduct is sin.&#8221; The bill, they&#8217;re&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-15T17:37:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Coral Ridge Ministries is working hard to defeat the &#8220;Hate Crimes&#8221; legislation being considered in Congress. A recent email declared: &#8220;If we don&#8217;t stop it now, it will become law, and that will mean a loss of liberty for Christians who stand up for the biblical truth that homosexual conduct is sin.&#8221; The bill, they&#8217;re&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-06-15T17:37:25+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html","name":"The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-06-15T17:37:25+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-15T17:37:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/06\/the-freedom-to-violently-attac.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Freedom To Violently Attack Gays"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}