Hate crimes on hold

LANSING –
Democratic leaders in the state House on May 14 put off action on bias crime legislation which was passed on for action by the House Judiciary Committee the day prior. The bill passed out of committee to the full floor on a party line vote, with the eight Democrats voting in favor and five Republicans voting against.
One of the sponsors of one of the two bills in the package, Kalamazoo Democrat Robert Jones, said the move to wait on a vote was made "to make sure all the t's are crossed the i's are dotted." Specifically, Jones said, leaders need time to understand the impact of a series of amendments being offered to the legislation.
The four Republican amendments offered include a motion by Rep. Tonya Schuitmaker, a Republican from Lawton, which will strike the enumeration portion of the legislation out, replacing it with language originally proposed in the House Judiciary Committee Hearing Wednesday by Grand Ledge Republican Rick Jones.
Enumeration is a legal term referring to the identification of a series of items, in this case protected classes, such as sexual orientation, race, gender or religion, among others.
Another amendment, this time offered by Rep. Larry DeShazor, a Portage Republican, would amend the legislation to replace the phrase "selects the target," and instead replacing it with "demonstrates the specific intent to target the victim." This replacement language would happen twice in the bill.
Two other actions were offered by Rochester Hills Republican Tom McMillin. The first move from McMillin would remove the language making cross burnings and noose hangings illegal and place it in a stand alone bill. This would serve as a substitute piece of legislation, and eliminate the rest of the bill. This idea was proposed by Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, during his testimony Wednesday.
During that testimony, Glenn told the Judiciary Committee, "It (the bill) is also not primarily about banning nooses or cross burnings. I note that there are 104 lines and five pages on this bill only nine lines on the very last page make any reference whatsoever to cross burnings or hanging nooses, and I would suggest to you – its my anticipation that if you were to take that out and make it a free standing bill it would probably pass both houses in the next several weeks and be signed into law by the Governor."
The second move by McMillin comes straight out of the national conservative playbook. Last month during hearings on the federal hate crimes bill, commonly called The Matthew Shepard Act, conservatives attempted to define sexual orientation by listing various fetishes. Among them, pedophilia has become a national rally cry for conservatives, allowing them to label the federal act which is awaiting hearings and movement in the Senate, the pedophile protection act.
McMillin has proposed an amendment which would amend the legislation to define sexual orientation as "orientation, but not an orientation for or a history of pedophilia." National groups, including the national American Family Association argue the term sexual orientation covers a wide range of sexual activity, including heterosexuality, homosexuality, pedophilia, beastiality, and various fetishes.
"You're right that a lot of other amendments could be offered based on the various sexual 'orientations' and preferences defined by DMSSD manual. But why bother, since the entire bill is nothing more than an exercise in political posturing to begin with? Amended or not, it's DOA," said AFA Michigan's Gary Glenn. "And the elements of it that could theoretically, if considered on substance, win approval in both houses – disability, veterans, nooses, crosses – (Democratic) leadership in fact won't allow to be enacted since it would strip the mask from their real agenda."
Glenn continued: "Give them credit for creativity. But it just proves that even the Democrats don't want to address the (sexual orientation) and GI (gender identity) issues straight up, freestanding, on their own. If they thought they could sell it back home, they wouldn't go to such elaborate lengths to package their hidden agenda as protecting kids from bullying or protecting veterans or prohibiting cross-burnings. Anything but giving special protected class status to groups based on their engaging in homosexual behavior or cross-dressing."
An e-mail to McMillin's office was not returned before press time.