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 Letter to Members of Congress regarding "Sexual Orientation Hate" Laws

 

Dear ___________,

 

Please oppose the "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" hate crime bill when it comes to a vote in the Congress. The net effect of introducing such categories into federal law will be to intimidate persons who love homosexual persons but don't love the error of homosexual behavior into shutting up or face an attenuation of their civil liberties. Hate crime legislation will do nothing to reduce anti-homosex violence against homosexual persons. A homosexual person is far more likely to die of disease associated with homosexual practice than become a victim of an anti-homosex bias crime. The real effect of a "sexual orientation hate" law will be to codify in law the view that any opposition to homosexual practice, no matter how loving, is rank bigotry. It is not right that I and my children should be regarded by the law for all intents and purposes as the moral equivalent of a racist. An impulse to engage in bodily discordant sexual behavior with a person of the same sex cannot be equated with race and sex, which are 100% heritable, absolutely immutable, primarily non-behavioral, and thus essentially benign conditions. An orientation to something, no matter how steeped in congenital causation factors, is not a moral argument. Pedophilia (pedosexuality) and polyamory (polysexuality) are sexual orientations too, but congenital causation factors don't make these conditions morally acceptable. Protecting the freedom of my family to hold our convictions on this issue without being classified by the law as bigots is the most important political issue for me that you will vote on this year. See my fuller write-up on the subject of so-called hate-crime legislation at http://www.robgagnon.net/HateCrimesBill.htm

Thank you,

 

Robert Gagnon, Ph.D.

 

 

 

  © 2007 Robert A. J. Gagnon