“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

–George Orwell, Animal Farm

Congress has this week added homosexuality to the list of protected classes in hate crimes legislation. My beef is not so much that homosexuals were added but that hate crimes legislation exists at all.

Just as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, we have forgotten the Revolution and its principles. We live in a land that was founded on the principle of freedom and equality. And I will be the first to admit that we didn’t get it right in action [slavery], though our philosophy was perfect. And it was an appeal to that philosophy that aided us as we emerged from the evil of slavery. For America to now re-divide people, based on any number of factors, is naive, dangerous, and insane. But what is most heinous is to assign differing values to people’s lives based on those factors. For example, if you murder me, in the eyes of the law, you have not committed as bad a crime (because I am a heterosexual white male) as if you murdered someone who was a homosexual black transgendered person. I take issue with that, and not because I count myself of greater worth than a homosexual black transgendered person, but I certainly don’t attribute to myself less worth than that person. America is the protector of equality of life. And none of us has more life than any other.

But, what should we expect from a society that has seemingly no qualms with allowing women (and there doctors and clergy, to quote Barack Obama) to extinguish life within their womb for the simple reason that it is within their womb? That’s like saying that because I own a house, I have the right to choose whether the inhabitants live or die, based on whatever my whims may be, unless they walk out the door (but in special cases, I can drag them halfway out the door, drive a pair of scissors into the back of their head and suck their brains out and still be OK. Well maybe not me; I would probably need to employ the services of an individual who has trained and taken an oath to protect life to come by and help me kill those inhabitants of my abode, but I digress). The point is this: when we start subdivind life into usefulness, we make certain classes of people expendible. That is a danger. And it is real.

The Baptist Messenger reports that opponents of the hate crimes legislation

say it would move federal law toward punishing thoughts and beliefs, since the motivation of a person charged with a hate crime would have to be evaluated. In addition, some critics warn it eventually could result in suppression of speech that describes homosexual behavior as sinful.

The story also includes this:

“This is a historic day that moves all Americans closer to safety from the scourge of hate violence,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese in a written release. HRC is the country’s largest homosexual advocacy group.

So now we are supposed to believe that mere criticism equals hate violence? If that is the case, Christians, Republicans, and especially President Bush are in line to be the most protected of the special classes because we are all certainly no strangers to criticism. However, no thinking person can understand this to mean that. It means that our ability to criticize certain things as sinful is destroyed, while doing nothing to protect us from “the scourge of hate violence” that is so often directed at us from our opponents.

We need to wake up here. All the animals are equal, period. Murder, of anyone, is evil. Criticism, of anyone, is a freedom. Part of the responsibility of living in a free society is bearing the weight of one’s choices and actions, equally, from person to person.