Real hate of course stinks. Real bullying also stinks. We have heaps of both, and they are to be resisted and challenged. But the problem is, we can go to unhelpful extremes in combating such things. Indeed, we can go overboard, and destroy basic freedoms in the name of a good cause.
All over the West we have quite unhelpful and even harmful legislation known as hate crime laws. Many of them are ostensibly to stamp out bullying, and much of it is fomented by the homosexual activists. But all that such laws tend to do is harm freedom of speech and enforce by state power political correctness.
I have discussed this at length elsewhere, eg:
www.billmuehlenberg.com/2007/05/02/the-trouble-with-hate-crime-legislation/
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2007/07/18/unleashing-the-thought-police/
But I wish to speak to this a bit further, in light of a new call for hate crime laws. Often it is the case that some tragic case of bullying results in calls for more such laws to go into effect. And when a tragic suicide occurs, then it is even more of an emotive appeal.
Consider the case of a UK girl who killed herself because of her red hair. Now her dad wants to make red hair jokes a hate crime – really. One news story goes like this: “The father of a girl found dead after being bullied over her red hair has called for ginger jokes to be made a hate crime. Enda Farrell, 56, said he believed his daughter Helena, 15, might still be alive had she not been picked on because of her hair colour.
“The teenager was found dead in woodland half a mile away from her home in Kendal, Cumbria, in January. The cause of her death has not yet been officially established, but yesterday her father said he believes Helena killed herself. Mr Farrell, a former town councillor, said she had been tormented all her life by bullies’ taunts about her ginger hair.
“He called for a change in the law to make it illegal to discriminate against people because of their hair colour. ‘People need to realise that when they say the things they do, it can have deeply traumatising effects and can lead to self-harm and suicide,’ he said. ‘Helena’s death was not just because of it but the bullying she faced all her life certainly contributed’.”
Now as I said, bullying is just not on, and suicide is always a tragic outcome, regardless of the causes. But we live in an age in which we want to turn everything into a legal issue, and make every type of behaviour punishable by the law.
That is certainly a dangerous direction to be moving in. We of course already have laws on the books to deal with basic criminal behaviours. But hate crime laws tend to stifle freedom of speech, and turn people into even worse criminals because of supposed intentions or motivations.
And the simple truth is, almost everyone is bullied at least sometime, and for a whole host of reasons. I certainly was bullied at various times while growing up. I got my fair share of it at school. And even now I can still be bullied for various reasons. In one sense this is just a part of life.
We need to deal with it and move on. Sure, serious and sustained bullying must be thwarted where and when possible. But taking every conceivable reason for bullying and teasing (such as red hair) and turning it into some sort of crime is really going over the top.
As I say, probably everyone has experienced bullying. At my schools when I was a child, there were plenty of candidates: if you were tall, or short, or poor, or rich, or fat, or skinny, and so on. Of course if you were ugly that could be bad news, but in fact, I knew of good looking people who were bullied as well – and basically because of their good looks.
I can even remember one gal – I think her name was Kathy Weber (I don’t think she will be reading this!). She was an attractive blond for a young kid – dunno, we might be talking second or third grade here. Because she was cute, as well as a bit polished and higher class than many of us, and also somewhat of a new student, she too was often criticised or teased or made fun of.
So there you go, even those who seem to have it all – looks, glamour, prestige, etc – can still be targeted. So should we ban all jokes about blondes? Should we make it illegal for folks to poke fun at rich kids, or pimpled kids, or skinny adults, or gawky teens, or overweight spinsters, or red-headed truck drivers?
The list is endless of course, and adding a thousand new laws to the books does not seem to be the way to proceed here. Again, all teasing and bullying is unpleasant and wrong, and some of it is quite dangerous and nasty. And no suicide can ever be taken lightly.
So we understand the father’s grief, but his calls for yet more laws is missing the mark. We are well on the way to making everything illegal. It is time to stop and reassess. Societies burdened down with a plethora of laws quickly move from being soft tyrannies to hard tyrannies.
We may already be too far gone in this regard. We dare not go any further.
Already to far gone you say Bill. Sadly I think you may be right. It is a reflection on our societies propensity to disregard God and His law of love.
I recall the time, as I’m sure you do, when even unbelievers would live by the Biblical principle “Do unto others as you would have done to yourselves”. Luke 6: 31 They would even chastise they children for breaking such a “rule”.
Getting back to a Biblical world view in all the different departments of society (law, education health etc) is the desperate need of our times.
This is the answer to all these hate driven “crimes” not those idiotic hate crime laws.
Dave Powell
It’s funny that there are calls in the UK to make discriminating against [red hair] “coloured people”. But in Australia there is what the chief of the NSW anti-discrimination board says targets of “lawful discrimination”. Let’s find out shall we who are those lesser class of citizens who deserve to be discriminated against with impunity.
In Australia Alex Greenwich MP (Lesbian Loving Clover Moore’s henchman) just got a bill passed that removes the exemption from religious schools to expel homosexual students [with love], and is moving to add transexuals to the anti-discrimination act whilst keeping homosexuals exempt – and moving to completly non-exempt religious organizations to as to make it a crime under anti-discrimination law to refuse to performe a gay marriage (source: “Meet your Greens” – Sydney Star Observer Newspaper – David Shoebridge asks for total non-exemption of all religious organizations). The left leaning Anglican churches have no problems with this bill as Reverened Bill Crews said he supports it when I talked to him on air on 2GB about it. Here’s a more well recieved radio interview on 2GB with a different host. http://soundcloud.com/hojuruku/gays-above-god-under-law
So a Catholic School for example can’t “expel with love” aka help the student find a more apt place to wear those gay fashion items like ear rings and kiss the boys on the quadrangle at lunch time. Because of course gays dictate religious edict and practice in religious schools now. This has to become the norm in religious schools including Islamic schools in the state of NSW effective very soon as the bill passed.
But what happens if we put the shoe on the other foot?
I’m going to cut and paste from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Website home page for exemptions.
Let’s cut and paste that again with a replace operation Unix (computer operating system style) ” sed ‘s/homosexual/white/g’ ” and the resulting text would be.
“… it is not against the law to discriminate against people who are not white – it is only against the law to discriminate against people who are white. However, under federal law…”
This exemption is a blanket one. The word hetrosexual is not in the act. Go figure. Only a bunch of homosexual buzz words.
So whe have GAY BIGGOTS in NSW Australia who support gay apartied. Do I need to remind you that race apartied in South Africa was so repugnant those who fought against it were called terrorists by the white elite and the conflict escalated to the level of armed battles on the streets and bombs going off. From that I think we realize is apartied is bad thing. But to keep the order we have “gay police fighting the terrorists” says the NSW Government anti-terrorism home page “hate crime and terrorism” page recently removed from the sights navigatable index and google cache https://secure.nsw.gov.au/For-individuals-and-community-groups/Community-engagement/Hate-crime-and-terrorism.aspx.
Not only do they have a blanent exemption to put a sign up the front of a preschool saying NO HETRO PARENTS ALLOWED just like whites in south africa could lawfully say NO BLACKS allowed, but they have special secret gay police that can accuse you of the crime of knowing you are a victim of discrimination (i.e. hate crime) because it is a crime to know a gay cop is gay under 60C NSW Crimes Act http://tinyurl.com/homocopvictim for all the interviews and evidence on that one. The story is unfolding with the 60C Search Warrant having NO POLICE EVENT NUMBER in the C.O.P.S. system – deleted to protect a sensior police officer who got the job as regional commander of sydney after the gay community gave outcries that enough wasn’t done after an assault against a homosexual man in Surry Hills in 2006/7. Her triumphant promotion to commander of Sydney was published in the gay newspaper with the headlines “heads roll in Surry Hills command”. She was mentored by Lola Scots who we all know helped robert “dolly dun” get immunity from prosecution. As I haven’t named her it isn’t defimation unless the audience is a keen reader of homosexual audienced newspapers and she’d need argue that her job would be impacted and she’d suffer damages by the homosexual community no longer supporting her. She even wrote articles in the gay news paper herself entitled “we [the nsw police] are not the enemy”. I’ll publish more developments in due course.
Luke McKee
Parallel to this, is the intended replacement for anti-social behaviour orders, in the UK. In essence, it will suppress anything thought to be irritating or annoying, even if the complaints are based on trivialities. So anyone who doesn’t like a street musician or an evangelist could complain and bring action.
Whether it will play out like that if/when enforced I don’t know, but the fact that people would have to watch everything they say or do, for fear of punishment, is beyond belief.
Chris Dark
The fearmongers make shocking parents but they are taking over from the children in charge. We don’t have time to spend in the Lodge garden with the cucumbers as the buildings are getting burned, the balance and our freedoms are being lost. The gospel retains its sweet relief – God bless those who proclaim it in our lifeless spaces: http://childrenincharge.blogspot.com
John Modra
Human law can not change a heart, not even the law God gave can do that – it takes personal forgiveness from a personal God at personal cost to do that – and yet, all bullying and all hate speech in the true sense I mean come from a heart that lacks the ability to love according to what perfect love says love should be. So, you can make things illegal, but change nothing.
And when we no longer believe in a God who can defend us, the only defence we have left is man-made law. Poor state of affairs all round.
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett
I want to speak in favor of Red Heads. Why? because they are, in the most, very creative and sensitive people. Bret Whitely as instance. I went to the same school as Bret in fact we shared the same years. He was the most naturally humorous guy you could meet, and intelligent to boot. He was subject to some bullying but it didn’t seem to faze him, because at 16-17yrs his main focus was his art, that i believe was his inspiration and driving force. No matter what came against him personally it had little affect because his vision was so strong that sort of stuff wouldn’t distract him from his main game. I’m sure if we look into this we will discover there are multitudes of red head men and women around the world working in all sorts of high powered and artistic positions that have sometime in their lives been subjected to bullying yet have been strengthened and focused on their vision not just the bullying.
Michael Mercier
In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four it was the Ministry of Love which ran the gaols with their torture chambers [re-education centres]. When power becomes a god and “survival of the fittest” is taught in schools as the only certain way to the topmost strands of the the web of life, why are we surprised that bullying has reared its ugly head in our community?
And seconds after this was published, I find this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303697/Police-classify-attacks-goths-punks-hate-crimes-bid-recognise-alternative-subcultures.html
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Already to far gone you say Bill. Sadly I think you may be right. It is a reflection on our societies propensity to disregard God and His law of love.
I recall the time, as I’m sure you do, when even unbelievers would live by the Biblical principle “Do unto others as you would have done to yourselves”. Luke 6: 31 They would even chastise they children for breaking such a “rule”.
Getting back to a Biblical world view in all the different departments of society (law, education health etc) is the desperate need of our times.
This is the answer to all these hate driven “crimes” not those idiotic hate crime laws.
Dave Powell
It’s funny that there are calls in the UK to make discriminating against [red hair] “coloured people”. But in Australia there is what the chief of the NSW anti-discrimination board says targets of “lawful discrimination”. Let’s find out shall we who are those lesser class of citizens who deserve to be discriminated against with impunity.
In Australia Alex Greenwich MP (Lesbian Loving Clover Moore’s henchman) just got a bill passed that removes the exemption from religious schools to expel homosexual students [with love], and is moving to add transexuals to the anti-discrimination act whilst keeping homosexuals exempt – and moving to completly non-exempt religious organizations to as to make it a crime under anti-discrimination law to refuse to performe a gay marriage (source: “Meet your Greens” – Sydney Star Observer Newspaper – David Shoebridge asks for total non-exemption of all religious organizations). The left leaning Anglican churches have no problems with this bill as Reverened Bill Crews said he supports it when I talked to him on air on 2GB about it. Here’s a more well recieved radio interview on 2GB with a different host. http://soundcloud.com/hojuruku/gays-above-god-under-law
So a Catholic School for example can’t “expel with love” aka help the student find a more apt place to wear those gay fashion items like ear rings and kiss the boys on the quadrangle at lunch time. Because of course gays dictate religious edict and practice in religious schools now. This has to become the norm in religious schools including Islamic schools in the state of NSW effective very soon as the bill passed.
But what happens if we put the shoe on the other foot?
I’m going to cut and paste from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Website home page for exemptions.
http://www.antidiscrimination.lawlink.nsw.gov.au/adb/adb1_antidiscriminationlaw/adb1_exemptions.html
“… it is not against the law to discriminate against people who are not homosexual – it is only against the law to discriminate against people who are homosexual. However, under federal law…”
Let’s cut and paste that again with a replace operation Unix (computer operating system style) ” sed ‘s/homosexual/white/g’ ” and the resulting text would be.
“… it is not against the law to discriminate against people who are not white – it is only against the law to discriminate against people who are white. However, under federal law…”
This exemption is a blanket one. The word hetrosexual is not in the act. Go figure. Only a bunch of homosexual buzz words.
So whe have GAY BIGGOTS in NSW Australia who support gay apartied. Do I need to remind you that race apartied in South Africa was so repugnant those who fought against it were called terrorists by the white elite and the conflict escalated to the level of armed battles on the streets and bombs going off. From that I think we realize is apartied is bad thing. But to keep the order we have “gay police fighting the terrorists” says the NSW Government anti-terrorism home page “hate crime and terrorism” page recently removed from the sights navigatable index and google cache https://secure.nsw.gov.au/For-individuals-and-community-groups/Community-engagement/Hate-crime-and-terrorism.aspx.
Not only do they have a blanent exemption to put a sign up the front of a preschool saying NO HETRO PARENTS ALLOWED just like whites in south africa could lawfully say NO BLACKS allowed, but they have special secret gay police that can accuse you of the crime of knowing you are a victim of discrimination (i.e. hate crime) because it is a crime to know a gay cop is gay under 60C NSW Crimes Act http://tinyurl.com/homocopvictim for all the interviews and evidence on that one. The story is unfolding with the 60C Search Warrant having NO POLICE EVENT NUMBER in the C.O.P.S. system – deleted to protect a sensior police officer who got the job as regional commander of sydney after the gay community gave outcries that enough wasn’t done after an assault against a homosexual man in Surry Hills in 2006/7. Her triumphant promotion to commander of Sydney was published in the gay newspaper with the headlines “heads roll in Surry Hills command”. She was mentored by Lola Scots who we all know helped robert “dolly dun” get immunity from prosecution. As I haven’t named her it isn’t defimation unless the audience is a keen reader of homosexual audienced newspapers and she’d need argue that her job would be impacted and she’d suffer damages by the homosexual community no longer supporting her. She even wrote articles in the gay news paper herself entitled “we [the nsw police] are not the enemy”. I’ll publish more developments in due course.
Luke McKee
Parallel to this, is the intended replacement for anti-social behaviour orders, in the UK. In essence, it will suppress anything thought to be irritating or annoying, even if the complaints are based on trivialities. So anyone who doesn’t like a street musician or an evangelist could complain and bring action.
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/reform-clause-1-feel-free-to-annoy-me.html
Whether it will play out like that if/when enforced I don’t know, but the fact that people would have to watch everything they say or do, for fear of punishment, is beyond belief.
Chris Dark
The fearmongers make shocking parents but they are taking over from the children in charge. We don’t have time to spend in the Lodge garden with the cucumbers as the buildings are getting burned, the balance and our freedoms are being lost. The gospel retains its sweet relief – God bless those who proclaim it in our lifeless spaces: http://childrenincharge.blogspot.com
John Modra
Human law can not change a heart, not even the law God gave can do that – it takes personal forgiveness from a personal God at personal cost to do that – and yet, all bullying and all hate speech in the true sense I mean come from a heart that lacks the ability to love according to what perfect love says love should be. So, you can make things illegal, but change nothing.
And when we no longer believe in a God who can defend us, the only defence we have left is man-made law. Poor state of affairs all round.
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett
I want to speak in favor of Red Heads. Why? because they are, in the most, very creative and sensitive people. Bret Whitely as instance. I went to the same school as Bret in fact we shared the same years. He was the most naturally humorous guy you could meet, and intelligent to boot. He was subject to some bullying but it didn’t seem to faze him, because at 16-17yrs his main focus was his art, that i believe was his inspiration and driving force. No matter what came against him personally it had little affect because his vision was so strong that sort of stuff wouldn’t distract him from his main game. I’m sure if we look into this we will discover there are multitudes of red head men and women around the world working in all sorts of high powered and artistic positions that have sometime in their lives been subjected to bullying yet have been strengthened and focused on their vision not just the bullying.
Michael Mercier
In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four it was the Ministry of Love which ran the gaols with their torture chambers [re-education centres]. When power becomes a god and “survival of the fittest” is taught in schools as the only certain way to the topmost strands of the the web of life, why are we surprised that bullying has reared its ugly head in our community?
John Wigg