Criminal Hate

Analysis…

Obama is set to sign TheMatthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law today, adding sexual orientation, gender and gender identity to the list of potential qualifiers for a hate crime.  The section on hate crimes was added as an amendment to a larger defense bill.  The Senate approved the measure 68-29 and the House of Representatives passed it 281 -146. 

Huffington Post | The FBI receives reports of nearly 8,000 hate crimes each year. Of those, about 15 percent are linked to sexual orientation, which ranks third after those involving race and religion. It’s long past time we do more to prevent hate crimes at the national level, particularly those targeting gays and lesbians.  If I were in the U.S. Senate today, The Matthew Shepard Act would have my full support because, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently said, “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees and laws may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”

Truthdig | It was a clever piece of marketing. It blunted debate about new funding for war. And behind the closed doors of the caucus rooms, the Democratic leadership told Blue Dog Democrats, who are squeamish about defending gays or lesbians from hate crimes, that they could justify the vote as support for the war. They told liberal Democrats, who are squeamish about unlimited funding for war, that they could defend the vote as a step forward in the battle for civil rights.

Crooks and Liars | The passage of the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act really is a momentous occasion: It marks the first time in history that Americans have collectively taken an effective stand against the thugs and bullies who have used violence through the course of our history to threaten and oppress whole populations of minorities.

The American Spectator | As a side note, watch for this hate-crimes legislation to be one of the few bones that Obama throws to the homosexual activist crowd in the near term. He’s sat on rescinding the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Ditto on repealing the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which has enjoyed bi-partisan support for years and was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. Signing the hate crimes bill will be a good way for Obama to shore up his extreme leftist base on this issue without costing too much political capital or diverting his attention from remaking the U.S. economy.

Opposing Views | The ERLC and others fear the measure, combined with existing law, could expose to prosecution Christians and others who proclaim the Bible’s teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful. For example, if a person commits a violent act based on a victim’s “sexual orientation” after hearing biblical teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, the preacher or teacher could be open to a charge of inducing the person to commit the crime, some foes say.  The final version of the bill approved by the Senate and House included language designed to protect freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion, but some religious liberties organizations do not consider the protections adequate.

News…

What a Black Barbie Should Look Like | Womanist Musings

For any little girl, a Barbie Doll is a complicated gift because it is so completely unrepresentative of female bodies.  Barbie is one of the mothers of negative body images.  This is compounded when the child in question is Black.  When a Black girl is given a Black doll with Eurocentric features and straight hair, what does it teach her but that she is not beautiful.  Because beauty is one of the few sites of female power this can be extremely damaging.  Loanne Hizo Ostlie of Tabloach Productions has been retooling these dolls and selling them on Ebay.

The Future in Flat Spin: Horizontal Wind Turbines| WebEcoist

As world-savingly admirable as wind turbines are…well, they kinda stick out. Putting aside the question of whether the colossal wind-turbines we are growing accustomed to seeing are bad for our health or for local wildlife – they’re definitely bad for the view. In fact they’re as incongruous as lamposts in a field of corn. But maybe we don’t need acres of whirring behemoths – we should just design our homes a little differently. Here are three examples of how we might achieve this.

Can Your Diet Make You Happy? | Alternet

In a study published earlier this month, Spanish researchers looked at the diets of 10,000 people and found those who mainly ate a Mediterranean diet had lower depression rates than those who did not. The study compiled data from Spanish people who reported their dietary intake on a questionnaire between 1999 and 2005.

After an average follow-up of 4.4 years, the overall incidence of depression for those who followed the diet was 30 percent lower than for those who mostly did not follow the diet. Even lower rates of depression were associated with intake of specific elements of the Mediterranean diet, such as fruits, vegetables and olive oil.