Two important legislative efforts underway on Capitol Hill today. One, backed by Democrats, would create new laws making murder and assault even more illegal. The other, backed mostly by Republicans, would elevate our flag from being the proud symbol of our nation and turn it into literally a holy object. I sincerely hope both actions fail.
I'm a veteran, like my father and brother before me. I once swore an oath to willingly die defending the Constitution of the United States. But this proposed new amendment doesn't defend or strengthen our nation, just the opposite. This WEAKENS our nation and erodes our freedom. We are a country, NOT A RELIGION. We don't need any national "sacred" objects and therefore, we don't need anything as drastic as a constitutional amendment to prevent "desecration" of any holy objects. Amending the Constitution to keep people from soiling/burning the flag is like dropping an atom bomb to clear out a fire-ant hill. Sure, it would stop the ants, but it would make your home unlivable.
Then there's the so-called "Hate Crime" legislation. It got a push today from Judy Shepard, the mother of the young man who was robbed and murdered in Wyoming (and who happened to be gay.) Like the Flag-burning thing, it sounds plausible at first. "Gee, it really should be illegal to rob, assault and murder people." Umm, wait a second, I think it already is illegal. The guys that murdered Matthew Shepard were swiftly arrested. One willing plead guilty and accepted life in prison. The other is facing execution. How much more severe could we make the punishment for murder? Maybe we could invent a system that brings people back from the dead so we could execute them multiple times? Maybe we could just amend the constitution so that torture is legal and we could prolong their death for weeks or even months like the Nazi's. Yeah, that would really "take a bite out of crime."
Come on people. Let's get real.
One other topic that I have to mention, in light of my story on Jerry Falwell's attack on purple "tele-tubbies" as gay, is the uproar over an advertisement that Anheuser Busch ran in a gay/lesbian newspaper in St. Louis. The ad featured two men holding hands. The gay community thought it was great to get both the ad-revenue and some positive ink. Falwell was very upset, and alerted his flock to "keep the heat on Anheuser-Bush so that they understand that pro-family Americans are terribly concerned about homosexual images."
Gee, I guess nothing riles Jerry up like seeing men holding hands while he reads a gay newspaper! If seeing gay men "concerns" him so, maybe he should find other reading material than a gay newspaper.
So, if Falwell whiped up a mob to lure a gay man out and lynch him, would we let the culprits go free just because there isn't a national hate-crime law? Naw I doubt it. What if the gay man was burning a flag at the time they hung him? Would the two crimes cancel each other out?
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