Bachmann Speaks Out Against Hate Crimes Legislation

Video and transcript excerpts from C-SPAN. Bachmann starts off by saying some creepy stuff about her creepy colleagues: Mrs. BACHMANN. I want to thank so much my colleague, STEVE KING from Iowa--the ``stunning'' STEVE KING of Iowa, as he is known in the mainstream media, so grateful for your advocacy, and also for that of Judge GOHMERT. And Judge GOHMERT, I trust that you're a hanging judge down in the State of Texas. ... and gets creepier: I feel that this hate crimes legislation in some ways could be considered the very definition of tyranny because it gives government literally the key over deciding what the thoughts of Americans should be. And it says that Americans could only hold certain opinions and not others, and they can only express certain opinions and not others. Otherwise, it would be seen as a criminal act. .... Tyranny? From who? .... oh, gay people: I think it also, we could say, denies equal protection under the law. If you have an individual going through a crosswalk and a person is in their car and they hit that person in the crosswalk, it is up to the person who is hit to file the charge if it was a hate crime or not. So if the person is gay, and that is the status that is being protected, and the person driving the car is straight, would it be a hate crime if the person driving the car who is straight hit the person who is gay in the crosswalk? So does it say, then, that that life that was hit in the crosswalk is more valuable because it was a gay life versus if the person who was in the car, who is gay, who hits the person in the crosswalk, who is straight, does that mean that the straight person in the crosswalk doesn't have a cause of action against the person who is gay who is driving that car? It raises the question of whose life is valuable and whose isn't. That is the question that Mr. Gohmert raised earlier. Who will the government prefer? And who decides who gets protected? Are we protecting people on the basis of their behavioral actions; if they choose to have certain actions that are sexual in a certain manner, they get protected when others don't? Who decides who gets to be the good guy in this situation? Who gets to decide who is the bad guy in this situation? And I would ask this question, is it a moving target? If we give government this level of authority, then easily we can see that down the road government could amend this hate crimes law to say that now a new behavior will be protected. One thing that was mentioned by Mr. Gohmert earlier, that was brought up by Mr. King, that apparently people who are practicing pedophiles would be considered protected under this legislation, but not, I understand, veterans, not, I understand, pregnant women, not, I understand, 85-year-old grandmothers would be protected under this law. But who would be protected? A pedophile, someone who considers themselves gay, someone who considers themselves transgender, someone who considers themselves a cross-dresser? That is who is protected. And yet, think of the impossibility that we are tasking government with. We are asking government to peer into the mind of the individual who perpetrated the crime. Government somehow is so wise, so all knowing that now government can peer into the mind of the individual and can somehow discern if the individual in fact hated the person based upon, potentially, what their sexuality is versus the sexuality of the person who the crime was being perpetrated against. Won't that be a moving target? Depending on what the new behavior of the day--the behavior du jour, so to speak--that government approves or won't approve? Again, I think this is the very definition of tyranny because government's arbitrary decision will mean that more Americans will lose their First Amendment freedom of speech and expression. And this is something, again, that Mr. Gohmert had alluded to earlier. And that is when we can look, when this hate crime legislation has been put into place across the world, whether it is in Sweden, whether it is in Canada, whether it is in other nations, we can see what other nations have done with this type of legislation and what it has led to, the loss of freedom for individuals, citizens within those countries, and the citizens whose speech were protected. Then I look at the specter of our own Supreme Court. One of our Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said, again, we need to have more Supreme Court Justices in our country look at international laws and the laws of other countries when we define our own. Well, our judges could look at Sweden, they could look at Spain, they could look at Canada. And they could see that pastors and priests who spoke out and who just gave sermons behind their pulpit that promoted what the Bible says about sexuality--and homosexuality in particular--that was construed as a hate crime in Sweden, construed as a hate crime in Canada, in Britain, in Spain. And if that is the case, we will not allow pastors to even have freedom of speech and expression. Why does Bachmann have this big problem with (openly) gay people?