Remember Ake Green

Good people disagree about the value of federal hate crime statutes - I'm not sure where I stand on them myself - but now that an amendment may be voted on today [1] to add sexual orientation to the categories of people protected against hate-motivated beat-downs, I wanted to remind Big Con readers that such a bill has been subject to the most offensive right-wing disinformation campaign [2] imaginable.

The amendment is endorsed, the Human Rights Campaign [3] notes, by the National Sheriffs Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 26 state attorneys general, the National District Attorneys Association, the NAACP, the Episcopal Church, the League of Women Voters, the YWCA of the USA and the United Methodist Church.

But the religious right lies [4], and says it's a bill to put preachers in jail. Sick. Sick. Sick.

(May I add that a sickening man named George Will has helped give wing to this particular big con? See the last paragraph of this [5] column.)