Dan Gilgoff writes at the U.S. News & World Report:
“What you say from the pulpit could literally become illegal,” the Family Research Council wrote in a recent letter to pastors. The conservative Alliance Defense Fund has received more calls and E-mails on what the hate crimes bill means for pastors than on any other issue in recent months.
As religious conservatives mount a last-ditch effort to derail the bill, however, legal experts say the legislation narrowly focuses on violent acts and that pastors’ speech remains protected by the First Amendment. And some religious activists acknowledge that they’re less concerned about the immediate effects of expanding hate crimes protections than about the broader message it sends. “This is the first time you would have written into law a government disapproval of a religious belief held by the majority of Americans—that homosexuality is sinful,” says Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “It’s more of a slippery slope argument than about the law itself.”
