It says all men are created equal. It doesn’t say anything about chicks and gays.
Published by punkass marc May 3rd, 2007 in Punkass!Unjust! Unfair! Unreasonable!
Liberals are at it again, denying equality to those who’ve rightfully inherited it with their acres of land, pale skin, and faint whiff of inbreeding.
In response to the House Democrats’ inclusion of gender and sexual orientation into its hate crime legislation, Republicans on Capitol Hill are crying foul:
“Our criminal justice system has been built on the ideal of equal justice for all,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “Under this bill justice will no longer be equal, but depend on the race, sex, sexual orientation, disability or status of the victim.”
I have to say, this truly is the end of equality. After all, how can we have a society of equality when when straight white males can no longer equally discriminate against everyone else?
In the old days, it didn’t matter if you were gay or brown or wearing a pegleg or in possession of a vagina. Whatever quality differentiated you from the image of God (
), you could be picked on for it.
White straight males already feel handcuffed when it comes to people of color — n-bombs can only be dropped on friendly territory, and lynching is way out of fashion these days. If this legislation passes, we’ll have to add gender and sexual orientation to the list of things we can’t openly commit hate crimes against, too.
Fortunately, even if the criminally unequal bill passes, white straight males can still thank the good lord for 2 things.
1) The ability to commit covert discrimination. This includes key phrases like:
-”I’m sorry, sir, we’re all booked tonight.”
-”My daughter isn’t allowed to date _anyone_ yet. I’m sure you understand.”
-”Dave was just more qualified than you, Janet. His six months of work at this company was worth, like, eighteen woman-months of work, you know?”
…Okay, maybe we can’t get away with that last sentence, but we can sure as heck get away with the one before it. Hate crimes may be out, but screwing with people never goes out of style.
2) All the other qualities we can still hold against other people, like weight, height, unbleached teeth, the lack of Banana Republic attire, and so forth.
It’ll be a shame if we can no longer hate everyone openly and equally, but as long as they never take away our ability to discriminate against the poor, we’ll hit most of the other categories anyway. :highfive:
I’m trying really really really hard to see that statement as a legitimate criticism of the bill. It ain’t working.
You could all move up here to Canada, where gender and sexual orientation have long been legally defined categories for hate crime.
It’s mostly a lie. Opponents of hate crime bills try to imply that straight white men aren’t protected, when in fact the wording of the bill makes it quite clear that if ever someone was to beat you up for being a straight white man, that would be a hate crime as well.
That people won’t beat you up for being straight or white or male is evidence of unfairness, alright, but it’s an unfairness Smith is trying to protect.
nice one, thx for putting the finger on it!
amanda, there ARE hoods where you CAN get beaten up or stabbed etc. for being white and male. i recall two incidents being discussed on indymedia.org.uk, where it was criticised that most anti-racist groups turned a blind eye on these incidents for obvious reasons, as did most mainstream media, and even the victims and their parents didn’t want to have the racist part discussed, cause they’d have to live there also in the future. however, the perpetrators still got sentenced much more pronto than the other way round usually …