While listening to the radio this morning, I heard a passing mention of something in California called "the 1234 Bill." I looked it up, and found a bit of clarification: Senate Bill 1234. Apparently it's meant to address hate crimes before the crime is actually committed by imposing sentences for people who incite others to acts of violence.

Now, I'm all for preventing violence, but I immediately see problems with this bill. I've never liked the idea of "hate crimes" legislation, because all crimes against people are, to some degree, an act of hate, and we already had laws in place to deal with such crimes. The supporters of the bill seem to want to prevent people from spreading terror among a particular group of people, be it Muslims or the pro-homosexuality folks*. The opponents of the bill believe that it will lead to a situation similar to Sweden, where pastors can be arrested for speaking out against homosexuality, or Canada, where groups like Focus on the Family will be prevented from speaking similarly on the radio.

ReligiousTolerance.org downplays these fears from the opposition, but I can't say that I share their optimism. All it takes is one lobby or determined individual to take a case to court and convince the judge that a sermon against the sin of homosexuality constitutes the incitement of a group to violence to begin a trend of serious free speech curtailment. In an era of judges who legislate, I have little faith in the letter of these laws - they need language that would better define exactly what constitutes such activities, and I think they also need something in there that would prevent people from twisting the language to support their censorship of others.

Better yet, I'd just prefer not to have the bill at all. I don't like the idea of people terrorizing others, or, for a specific example, the possibility of a Muslim cleric inciting his flock to acts of violence against Jews or encouraging the actions of al-Qaeda (as we've seen happen in mosques across the world); or of others inciting violent action against Muslims in our own country. But consider this: a pro-homosexuality individual hears a sermon, be it in a church or on a street corner, and he feels threatened by it; he looks around and sees that others are listening, and the preacher is using words like "abomination before the Lord," "sin," and "damnation." Now, does it matter that the preacher isn't attempting to incite violence, as long as the individual feels threatened? What, exactly, constitutes "hate speech"?

Until these things can be defined exhaustively, denying courts the opportunity to engage in relativistic determination, I think things like Bill 1234 pose a threat to evangelism, and a threat to the 1st Amendment.

*If I hadn't mentioned it before, I really dislike using the terms "homosexuals", "gays," et. al. to refer to people who engage in such acts, because I think it's harmful for people to build their identities on the practice of a sin. Referring to people with the common phraseology, in my opinion, reinforces this false identity. Though it could be dismissed as a case of semantics, I think it's a significant case. If my sentences sound a little tortured as a result of this, I apologize.