Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1913, Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1913, LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT HATE CRIMES PREVENTION ACT OF 2009 -- (House of Representatives - April 29, 2009)
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Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, with all the challenges that we have in this Nation, we still hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and that they are equal because they are all God's children. Therefore, the essence of America is that all people should be treated with the same respect and protected completely equally under the law. Whenever we begin to divide ourselves into groups and afford one group more protection than another, we necessarily diminish the protection and equality of all the remaining groups.
Mr. Speaker, regardless of whether a person is white, black, handicapped, healthy, old, sick, young, homosexual, heterosexual, a veteran, a police officer, a senior, whatever the case is, they deserve equal protection under the law.
That is the foundational premise of this Nation, and this legislation moves us all directly away from that basic foundation in a profound and dangerous way.
This legislation would prosecute individuals, not on the basis of their crime, but on their alleged motivation for committing it. It requires law enforcement officials and prosecutors to gather evidence of the offenders' thoughts, rather than their actual actions and their criminal intent.
Furthermore, under this bill, such individuals who may not even have been aware of the crime could receive the same or similar penalties as the criminal himself. It would only take some arbitrary prosecutor to construe that the individual had influenced the beliefs or thoughts of a perpetrator of a crime and thereby somehow caused hateful or violent acts. One unscrupulous government entity, plus this hate crimes legislation, equals the perfect recipe for tearing away from American citizens some of the most basic constitutional rights in our Nation.
Mr. Speaker, the fundamental purpose of this body is to protect the lives and constitutional rights of the American people regardless of who they are or what they believe. Unfortunately, this legislation would do just the opposite by granting unequal protections based on personal beliefs and thoughts, and it would endanger the constitutional liberties of millions of Americans.
I thank the gen tle lady for the time and urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
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