"And hate crimes is dead."--A well-wired Arkansas lobbyist, in a casual matter-of-fact reference while providing a litany of extreme conservative policies that will enjoy a heyday at the Trumpvillian legislation session starting in January.
Elections have consequences. Arkansas went ruby red Nov. 3. The looming Arkansas legislative session will be a consequence.
The most right-wing of state senators--and that's really to the right--have stacked themselves on the Senate Judiciary Committee for this imminent session.
Their purpose, sources say, was to embed a majority to pass any guns-galore bills they can think of and remove gays, lesbians and transgender persons from any protected classes in a new hate-crimes law that the pragmatic Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, is admirably pushing.
These extreme-right senators also want a stand-your-ground law, meaning one by which you may legally shoot a perceived threat rather than back away from it.
A hate-crimes law allows a prosecutor, after winning a standard conviction for a crime, to seek add-on punishment based on establishing by evidence that the crime was committed out of hatred toward certain groups of people based on race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, homelessness, gender identity, sexual orientation, sex, disability and service in the armed forces. A crime against a police officer already can net extra punishment.
Only Arkansas and two other states have no hate-crimes law. Hutchinson, Democratic legislators, a few Republican ones, the state business leadership and many mainstream religious groups endorse such a law and have proposed a bill to that effect.
The extreme right and the faux-evangelicals either oppose punishing hate altogether--they call it punishing thought--or believe that a hate-crimes law is all right as long as you leave gender identity and sexual orientation out of it.
Let's excise from this equation--just for the moment--the moral disgrace of excusing hatred of gay people, or of any group based on its difference. Let's talk instead about something that matters to Arkansas' current political rulers. That's the economy. Money.
Arkansas already sends the wrong modern message to national and international business people. It is that it is one of three backward states without a hate-crimes law. Now it's going to make the message even worse by saying we have a hate-crimes law, but we amended ours to say it's all right to hate homosexuals.
Oh, yeah. That's the ticket. High-tech people are going to stream here for the 4.9 percent newcomer income-tax rate and the officially condoned hatred of gay people. We're going to ride tax injustice and homosexual hatred all the way to the bank.
You remember the Senate Judiciary Committee. It's the one in which Sen. Stephanie Flowers of Pine Bluff, who is Black and a Democrat, went off profanely--and virally, and gloriously--against her fellow members in 2019. They were pushing a stand-your-ground law, meaning, essentially, that you needn't retreat, but may freely shoot when you feel threatened by someone, or can explain to the police that you felt threatened.
It's a horrid law that invites armed confrontation. It excuses, even promotes, reckless firearm usage over sane avoidance of dangerous interaction. The bill failed in that committee, 4-3.
Now senators have chosen committee assignments, and right-wingers Alan Clark, Bob Ballinger, Trent Garner, Gary Stubblefield and Terry Rice--an extreme-right all-star squad--have piled themselves onto Judiciary to keep Flowers, who will be back there, or anyone else from stopping them this time.
Consider the combination of a stand-your-ground law and a hate-crimes law that excuses hate of a transgender person. Or don't. It's too ugly to fathom.
Gays are sinners, these people think, so it's not as bad, they believe, to hate them and act on that as it is to hate, say, Black people, and to act on that.
T his idea that gays, lesbians and transgender persons are sinners and, on that basis, don't warrant the consideration in law given persons protected by race or ethnicity or homelessness ... that's decidedly odd.
Where does this idea arise that sinners can't have full rights?
We don't deny full rights by law to a garden-variety adulterer or fornicator or bearer of false witness. We might not be able to seat a state legislature if we did.
Sources tell me that the extreme-right coalition on the Senate Judiciary Committee intends to kill the existing proposal. They say it probably will pass out a rewritten version with vague language that will allow members to vote for an excuse for a hate-crimes law without having to go back home with the stain of gay tolerance, which would get them beat in the next red-rage primary.
Arkansas will proclaim itself a gay-hating, stand-your-ground haven where modern businesses need not apply.
That's what y'all voted for.
--–––––v–––––--
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
"right" - Google News
November 26, 2020 at 04:17PM
https://ift.tt/3m9Nblr
OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: To the right of right - Arkansas Online
"right" - Google News
https://ift.tt/32Okh02
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: To the right of right - Arkansas Online"
Post a Comment