James Madore writes the following:
"Homosexuals do not want to be equal and they do not want to be married. They want to be accepted. They want to ease their conscience [sic]. They feel that by forcing the issue and making themselves heard, and heard loudly, that eventually people will be forced to accept their lifestyles and those of us (me for instance), who believe that homosexuality is a sin and a "lifestyle" that God calls an abomination, should be silenced and perhaps eventually persecuted for "hate speech." It's not a lifestyle folks, it's a deathstyle. Those who participate in homosexual sex are putting their lives in jeopardy. For that matter, those who participate in heterosexual sex outside of marriage (one man and one woman) are putting their lives in jeopardy."
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Response:
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I am sickened by this tripe.
I am openly gay, and am so tired of being attacked by fundamentalist Christian gay-bashers who believe that their hatred of gay men and lesbians can be justified by making reference to the Bible.
I wish to clarify an important issue. The issue in question pertains to my respect for the right of Madore and other Americans of his ilk to express themselves freely and without fear of criminal prosecution for their hateful rhetoric. Make no mistake about it -- the above comment by Madore constitutes naked hatred on display. Contrary to the tripe written about the possibility of statements such as the above being criminalized by the proposed addition of sexual orientation to the existing federal hate crimes statute, no federal or state statute may ever be passed and upheld in the US to silence people such as Madore. I shudder with revulsion and disgust when I read statements such as the above, but have absolutely no desire to silence Madore or any other religious bigot who believes that he or she cannot be called on ugly comments because those comments reflect religious sentiment.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), the US Supreme Court held that speech, or advocacy, may not be criminalized unless "...such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
The proposed addition of sexual orientation to the existing federal hate crimes statute would permit sentences to be enhanced in those cases where VIOLENT CRIMINAL ACTS are motivated by hatred of the victim's sexual orientation. This statute does NOT single out and grant to gay people a greater degree of protection than is afforded members of other identifiable groups -- the revised statute would protect ALL Americans, due both to the letter of the law and the construction placed on that law by federal and state courts.
All people have a sexual orientation. The proposed addition of sexual orientation to the existing federal hate crimes statute would, by its plain language (that is, by its terms), grant federal judges the power to enhance sentences in those cases where violent criminal acts are motivated by hatred of the victim's sexual orientation -- whether the victim be gay, heterosexual, asexual, or bisexual. Thus, a gay woman who commits a violent crime against a heterosexual man due to the perpetrator's hatred of heterosexuals could be subject to an enhanced penalty upon being convicted, in exactly the same way that a heterosexual man could be subject to an enhanced penalty upon being convicted of committing a violent crime against a gay man due to his hatred of the gay man’s sexual orientation. These statutes cut both ways and protect everybody equally. The religious right has argued that hate crimes statutes are unconstitutional, claiming that these statutes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (or the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause); this argument is ludicrous because, contrary to the claims made by the hard right, these statutes protect both gay and heterosexual Americans alike. Furthermore, the hard right does not argue that the existing federal hate crimes statute (which includes race, national origin, and religion) is unconstitutional. These religious fanatics do not argue that the existing federal hate crimes statute violates the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection as it currently reads; only when the addition of sexual orientation is proposed do these evil men and women argue that the federal hate crimes statute would become unconstitutional. Apparently, the addition of sexual orientation to the protective ambit of this statute works a mysterious constitutional deformity on an otherwise constitutional statute.
Note that RELIGION is one of the characteristics already identified by the protective ambit of the existing federal hate crimes statute. Why do Madore and other anti-gay commentators not claim that the existing federal hate crimes statute is violative of the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, insofar as religious beliefs, which are certainly a matter of choice, are already protected by this statute? Can these people say hypocrisy?
The “Traditional Values Coalition” actually falsified a transcript of events from the Tuesday, April 24 House Judiciary Committee’s markup of H.R. 1592 (the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act). This behavior – falsifying a Congressional committee’s transcript and then circulating this false transcript – is a brazen violation of the Ninth Commandment, which prohibits the intentional bearing of false witness (refer to
http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2007/05/tvc_the_least_t.html for more information about this disgusting travesty, and about the manner in which other right-wing organizations (the “American Family Association,” the “Family Research Council,” etc.) were complicit in its perpetration and perpetuation).
Is Madore a mind reader? He states that gay people such as me do not want to get married. Who told him this? From where did he derive his “knowledge” of what gay people generally (and activists such as me specifically) do and do not want out of life and out of a society predicated on guarantees of the equal protection of the laws? Does Madore possess an instrument that can peer into my soul and tell him what I do and do not want? Does Madore (and do those who agree with him) know what flows through the hearts and minds of those of his fellow Americans who happen to be gay? This disgusting attack would have made even Goebbels blush; any person possessing a mere vestige or trace of common decency should condemn this ugly rhetoric out of hand, without qualification and without equivocation.
Madore goes even further, openly comparing gay Americans to burglars, pedophiles, adulterers, and murderers. He cites as his authority for making such comparisons several biblical passages. He forgets a fact so basic that its enunciation should not be necessary – that the US is not his personal theocracy, and that I, as a citizen of the US, answer not to the Bible but to a principle so basic that its enunciation, too, should not be necessary – the social contract, which has at its core an unspoken understanding: that I, as a responsible citizen and human being, should not harm my fellow human beings, or rob them of their right to comport their lives with dignity and integrity. Pedophiles inflict incalculable damage to the spirits and souls of persons acknowledged by that contract to be too young to consent to sexual activity. Burglars rob other persons of their possessions, their security, and their right to property. Adulterers violate a promise upon which the emotional and spiritual security and welfare of their partners depends. Murderers rob their fellow human beings of life itself, committing the ultimate hostile act and ending the existence of another human being. As a gay man, I want that which all decent people want – to love and to be loved; to work and to contribute to society; and to be connected, intimately, to another person with whom I wish to share my life and my love.
Of course I want acceptance. Of course I want equality. I want what you want.
I knew, very early in my childhood, that something about me was different from other people. My parents and my friends knew this too. I did not know what it was, but I knew, even as a very young boy, that it had ramifications that would impact my life, my emotions, and my connections to others. Only during puberty did that difference take on a form that I could identify, and I was terrified by what it meant and for how it would play out and for how it would change my relationships with others. I struggled for a decade to deny an aspect of my identity as fundamental and as basic as my height, my skin color, or my bone structure. I made no choice to be gay – I simply was, and am, gay. I have neither the training nor the desire to control my autonomic nervous system, which reacts to imagery and sensory input, and which expresses a facet of my identity when I become sexually aroused. I did not decide, one day, to become gay, as Madore appears to believe. I am what I am. Whereas there was once a time during which I denied and struggled to accept this component of my being, I am no longer willing or prepared to accept a form of second-class citizenship, thrust onto me by the religious right and by Bible-thumping bigots.
I am NOT religious, and will not tolerate being treated as an abomination by Madore and by others of his ilk. Many Americans believe that bigotry and naked cruelty are acceptable if framed within the context of religious sentiment. It is precisely this context – the usage of religion as a tool for the purposes of social control – that I bitterly resent and will not tolerate when utilized as an aggressive, offensive weapon to demean and to belittle my hopes and aspirations.
I, too, have dreams.
The US Supreme Court, in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), finally acknowledged that which it had once denied – that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause prohibits the states from criminalizing gay sex when such sex occurs in private settings between consenting adults. In handing down Lawrence, the Court explicitly and bluntly overturned an earlier decision (Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)) in which that same Court had sneered at the respondent’s claim that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment created a zone of sexual privacy in which gay Americans could express their sexuality without being subject to criminal prosecution. The Court actually apologized to gay Americans in Lawrence, acknowledging the Court’s “…own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake” in Bowers (see Lawrence, supra). The Court acknowledged that “…adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons,” and the Court further acknowledged that “…When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring” (see Lawrence, supra). Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the majority opinion – Kennedy once had as neighbors a gay male couple with whom he and his wife had socialized and had enjoyed weekend barbecues. I, personally, have seen the power that coming out of the closet can confer upon gay Americans – in response to my coming out, several friends and co-workers who had been extremely prejudiced and even overtly hostile to gay people were forced to rethink their attitudes and general beliefs about gay people and about homosexuality, radically altering their views. It is precisely because coming out – living an honest and open life – is so very powerful and so transformative that social conservatives such as Madore will go to almost any lengths to mock, belittle, demean, and defame the gay community, using buzzwords such as “deathstyle” to dramatize their opposition to gay equality.
Gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, and we now know that it will remain legal in Massachusetts. Despite frenzied efforts by opponents of gay marriage to force the issue of whether to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage to a statewide referendum, the state legislature (in a combined session of the state House and Senate) fell five votes short of the 50 votes required. Consequently, no further measures to ban gay marriage in Massachusetts can be debated until 2012.
Incidentally, Madore, who writes “I don’t believe in coincidences,” distorts and lies about the context within which the thunderclap was heard by members of the New York State Assembly as that body debated the question of gay marriage in the State of New York. The thunderclap, which Madore apparently believes was a form of divine expression, occurred precisely after Assemblyman Dov Hikind – a staunch opponent of gay marriage – made the following statement:
“There are certain things that do not change for me unless God sends a message to me.”
Perhaps Madore should rethink either his beliefs about coincidences, or his cruel and mean-spirited strafing of the gay community. Either way, may he one day look back on this column and hang his head in shame.
PHILIP CHANDLER