Last Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed into law the $680-billion defense authorization bill, which included a controversial hate-crime amendment — a provision that opponents say could affect personal freedoms and be used as leverage to legalize gay marriage.

The provision allows for actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity to be included in the category of “hate crimes.” If the courts determine that a person commits a crime against another because these variables, they could be prosecuted as having committed a hate crime and would be subject to a stricter jail sentence.

“After more than a decade of opposition and delay we’ve passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray or who they are,” Obama said at the signing.

Before reaching the president’s desk, First District Republican Rep. Jerry Moran and Fourth District Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt voted against the bill, citing their opposition to the hate-crime provision. Second District Rep. Lynn Jenkins, a Republican, and Third District Rep. Dennis Moore, a Democrat, voted in favor of the defense bill, though Jenkins indicated she was opposed to the hate-crime amendment.

Judy Smith, state director of Concerned Women for America, said she believed the amendment could be used to legalize same-sex marriage at the national and state level.

“Clearly activists will try and use this legislation to undermine the Defense of Marriage acts,” Smith told Kansas Liberty.

Kansas residents overwhelmingly supported and passed a constitutional amendment in 2005 to ban same-sex marriages, but Smith said she was not certain the amendment would make Kansas immune from attempts to legalize same-sex marriages.

“The courts are thinking about the ‘evolving culture,’ so I would not be surprised to see some of the constitutional amendments challenged,” Smith said.

Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, agreed that the constitutional amendment could not be used as an absolute protection from maintaining a same-sex marriage ban in the state, especially if the federal government legalized the unions.

“Anything that is done at the federal level would trump our constitutional provision,” Kinzer, chair of the Judiciary Committee, told Kansas Liberty.

Kinzer said he has a fundamental opposition to hate crime laws because they afford certain victims more protection and more justice than others, and because they attempt to define a person’s motive for committing a crime. In addition to these concerns, Kinzer said he could foresee the amendment’s language being used to indirectly promote same-sex marriages.

“I could see a court using this as background for a type of argument advancing same-sex marriage,” he said.

A September Heritage Foundation report said that “sexual orientation nondiscrimination” laws could be used to legalize gay marriage throughout the nation and that the laws had already been utilized to promote the agenda of same-sex marriage advocates in Massachusetts, California and New York.

“Same-sex marriage advocates have openly stated that nondiscrimination laws and other gay-rights policies are important steps toward the more radical goal of marriage redefinition,” the report said.

Resources
Hate Crime amendment could affect personal freedoms, opponents say

Heritage Foundation report

The Week in Review