Ruth Institute Blog

by Charlie Butts

After analyzing the numbers in the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics report for 2010, Matt Barber, vice president of Liberty Counsel Action, concludes that there is a clear bias against religion.

“There were fewer hate crimes committed against people based on an animus toward their sexual behavior than there were committed toward people based on religion,” he reports. “So that is to say there were more hate crimes committed against people because of anti-religious bias than there [were] for anti-homosexual bias.” Read more…

Associated Press

WASHINGTON, DC - Attacks on people based on their sexual orientation will join the list of federal hate crimes in an expansion of the law Congress approved Thursday and sent to President Barack Obama.

At the urging of Republicans, the bill was changed to assure that a religious leader or any other person cannot be prosecuted on the basis of his or her speech, beliefs, or association. But South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint worried that it would still “serve as a warning to people not to speak out too loudly about their religious views.” Read more…