Tweet
Pam, in her diary Daddy D crawls out of the crypt for lie-ridden hate crimes hysteria video, talks about Daddy D and his nutty views.
Let me tell you about the Focus On The Family/CitizenLink Take Action alert on the same federal hate crime legislation, entitled Take Action: Senate Committee to Take Up Hate-Crimes Legislation. There is a paragraph in it that angered me immensely:
“There is no evidence of an epidemic of sexual-orientation ‘hate crimes’ in this country,” said Ashley Horne, federal policy analyst at Focus on the Family Action. “So, what’s the real reason for this bill? Gay activists want to silence those who speak out against homosexuality.”
When I read that, I remember the words I heard 
spoken in recorded telephone call by Allen Ray Andrade, the convicted hate crime committing murderer of Angie Zapata:
“It’s not like I went up to a schoolteacher and shot her in the head or … killed a law-abiding straight citizen.”
Well, Ashley Horne, federal hate crime legislation isn’t about wanting to “…silence those who speak out against homosexuality,” unless it’s speech connected to violent crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, with the victims ove these violent crimes selected specifically because the victim is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
You know, victims like Angie Zapata. Her killer, Allen Ray Andrade, was convicted of both a murder and a hate crime after stating in a recorded, jailhouse phone call that no one would care much about Angie’s death because she wasn’t a schoolteacher or law-abiding straight citizen.
So let me personally impugn the motives of Ashley Horne, 
federal policy analyst at Focus on the Family Action with a quote of my own:
“There is evidence of hate crimes in this America, where victims are selected because of their perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression.“So, what’s the real reason that Ashley Horne of Focus On The Family and her conservative ‘Christian’ cohorts want to protect the ‘free speech’ of convicted killers like Allen Ray Andrade in their effort to defeat hate all crime legislation? It’s because they want people like Andrade to have the ‘free speech’ connected to their bias motivated, violent crimes protected when they terrorize lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual people to be protected ‘free speech’ — ‘free speech’ statements such as Andrade’s ‘Gay things must die’ and ‘It’s not like I went up to a schoolteacher and shot her in the head or … killed a law-abiding straight citizen.’“
That’s right, I said it, and I believe it. Ashley Horne of Focus On The Family, and all of her cohorts Focus On The Family are arguing to protect the horrid ‘free speech’ of killers like Allen Ray Andrade, who brutally beat Angie Zapata to death last July 16th with a fire extinguisher specifically because she was transgender.
Ashley Horne must own the “free speech” of Allen Ray Andrade in her opposition to hate crimes legislation, since “free speech” is what she’s claiming lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people like me want to suppress.
Own Andrade’s words, Ashley, and choke on ‘em.
11 Comments
What I’ve been saying all along . . . They want the same “freedom of religious speech” as the mullahs in Iran and Iraq – to advocate from the pulpit that their congregations take up stones and kill the nearest person who “looks gay” – and when their congregation members actually do it, they want immunity for incitement.
Their :freedom of religion” must be allowed to quash not only everyone else’s rights and freedoms, but also everyone else’s freedom of religion – it’s as if they think America is or should be a country with an Established Christianist Shariah – in religion and government.
Actually that IS what they think, too – and that actually have the swagger to say it out loud.
Bravo AutumnVery well stated! Make them own it.
Strong.This is what needs to happen- an utter calling out of all hate language and examples. Brilliantly done, Autumn- and those shots of Angie’s headstone are poignant and so sad…
For having done genealogical research since I was a kid, I have often looked at stones from hundreds of years ago and wondered about the lives, especially those of children. Sometimes multiples in a family- there is one family I know of where all of the sons (6 I think) were dead by age 25 of either typhoid or wounds in the Civil War. Very sad stories; another is where the only child born late in life to a couple drowned at age 9 and the cemetery overlooks the river where he died.
One wonders, in a hundred years, how future visitors to the cemetery will feel when they see this very young woman’s beautiful stone. Will they, as I have done, research Angie’s name? Will they already know it? How will they feel; what will their emotions be?
Will they feel a similar anguish to what so many who know Angie’s story have felt? Or will they feel as FOTF does?
I hope they will see the words and attitudes of these people as harmful, damaging, and vile as we do today.
Thank you AutumnI completely agree with Joann. You want free speech, you have to own all of it. Let’s not even forget the advocacy of quarantening and even exterminating gay men that came from the mouths of some of these bigots during the heights of the AIDS/HIV crisis in the 80′s.
And you cannot tell me that these crazy fundamentalist groups are not watching the repression and extermination of gay people Iraq, Uganda, and other countries and not taking notes. Indeed, in some parts of the world, they are aiding and abetting. And I have no doubt in my my that these groups would get away with that type of repression here if they thought they could get away with it.
That is so well put – now, to get you in front of MSM cameras, so you can spread that statement. I do hope you’ve sent it to some of the reporters you connected with in Greeley.
The Right and their LiesThe right constantly tries to undercount hate crimes. I ripped the Traditional Values Coalition for this in a recent youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
For instance, I discovered TVC doesn’t count murder as “violence”! Watch the vid for other outrageous items.
I agree.Strong is good. But it’s not just that it’s written forcefully either, the anger is justified, and it also happens to be the goddamn truth. These asshats are literally fighting for their “right” to irrationally hate others and harm the people they hate.
Are you kidding me? Allen Ray Andrade committed a crime when he killed Angie Zapata, right? Right.
Allen Ray Andrade beat another living human being to death with a fire extinguisher in July of 2008, right? Right.
Allen Ray Andrade actually spoke these words:
Right? Right.
Allen Ray Andrade actually believes – as evident by this statement:
– that he held the power to kill another human being because they were not a
Right? Right.
Allen Ray Andrade murdered Angie Zapata solely because she was a transgender woman, right? Right.
Allen Ray Andrade committed a hate crime, right? Right.
The fact that Allen Ray Andrade, per Ashley Horne, had his first amendment right compromised has no bearing on the situation in any way. Had his words been overheard in a coffee shop, a theater, or by an enforcement officer, he very well could have been stopped for conspiracy to commit murder. After reading Autumn Sandeen’s coverage of the Zapata murder trial, it is apparent that Andrade clearly premeditated this murder: he knew from the beginning that she was transgender, he knew from the beginning that he didn’t like it; Allen Ray Andrade plotted with his girlfriend to sell his story a mere $50,000 – is anybody’s life worth that?
Allen Ray Andrade’s right to free speech was NOT compromised. His right to free speech was automatically revoked the moment he uttered any words threatening to harm any single human being. If any person were to threaten a high-ranking government official’s life – whether it be via text, verbal conversation, letter, e-mail, instant message, blog post, profile description, or whatever other method – they would immediately be taken into custody for threats. To think that any one person should be allowed to threaten another’s life solely because they are not straight is offensive and downright sickening.
To Ashley Horne, James Dobson, and all your friends at Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Marriage, or whatever socially closed-minded, hate-focussed group you may chose to support, endorse, agree with, or whatever: federal GLBT legislation is NOT about protecting one person’s right to free speech; it’s about protecting one person’s LIFE from another who could use hatred and bigotry to ostracize or even terminate life.
why wait for an epidemic?Horne says “There is no evidence of an epidemic….”
Uhhh… must we wait for an epidemic before taking action? Do we wait for a majority of people to get cancer before treating those already sick? Do we wait for a noticeable cluster of people getting Lyme disease before developing a treatment protocol for the people already having symptoms? And how about those contracting swine flu? Seems like the whole country is held hostage in fear of catching that.
How many episodes would qualify in order to achieve “epidemic” proportions, anyway? Isn’t ONE case of targetted hate crime enough to make a reasonable, rational society rise up in protest?
Sheesh!
Well done Autumn!You are so right, this is what we’ve known all along and folks like Ashley Horne and James Dobson DO need to own, eat and choke on those words.
Those constant bleatings calling this “Anti-Free Speech Legislation” are bullshit of the highest order. They know that murder is wrong, and we all know that actions speak louder than words.
When you are motivated by a bias to take the life of another human being IT IS a hate crime. You hate them enough to take their life in your hands as if you were God and snuff them out.
It’s folks like these that make me more than ever believe that they want to give us “pieces of flair” like our LGBT brothers and sisters wore during the holocaust. Now that is a bit extreme to say, but they’re words are pretty clear. Because with those words I hear “Hey, it’s okay you killed them, they’re gay!”
They oppose hate crime legislation because they condone murderThat’s the only reason that Rethugs and other christian hate groups oppose hate crime legislation which includes sexual orientation and gender identity/presentation: because they believe that people should have the freedom to murder us. End of story.
If they were truly against hate crime legislation, they’d fight every session to revoke ALL of definitions, including that pesky “lifestyle choice” called religion, instead of cherry-picking the ones they don’t like. The law isn’t the bible – you can’t treat it like a salad bar and pick and choose what parts to follow.