laklak wrote:Yeah, rape and lynching are exactly the same thing, how could I have missed that?

Easy to miss when I never said rape and lynching are exactly the same thing.

Rapes are certainly under-reported, though, and I suspect a number of murders are dismissed as "stand your ground"/"castle defence" killings. It wouldn't surprise me if the occasional African/American's death by burning is regarded as an accident by a Sheriff or District Prosecutor. Unfortunately trapped in a burning barn. Or fell off the back of a pickup truck after somehow getting entangled with a length of chain. Something like that.

Mind you, a federal law against lynching is unnecessary. A federal law against murder might come in nicely, though. But I can't see the federalists allow one.

zulumoose wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:

A Christofascist hate group, calling itself "Liberty Counsel" (which apparently only wants liberty for its white Christofascist demographic) has been trying to lobby politicians to have LGBTQ people removed from the protections of the bill.

So, what this bunch of religiotards want, is to be able to lynch LGBTQ people without being prosecuted.

Fucking douche schooners.

Terrible misrepresentation.
Of course ANY Lynching will be subject to prosecution, you must know that.
What they want is for any specific mention of LGBTQ to be removed. They don't want "those" people represented or recognised in anything, given any special treatment, considered to have any specific rights or protections other than those afforded to everyone. The last thing they want is for LGBTQ to be considered a protected group in any form.

OK yes, they might have secret fantasies of being able to freely lynch them, but that is not what this is about.

Except of course, that it won't take long to find instances of the requisite fundies calling for gays to be murdered. This pestilence is even affecting us here in the UK, a country in which one would have thought even the serious wingnuts would know better than to peddle this shit.

Here's a typical example of the sort of rhetoric that is doing the rounds in the world of fundamentalist religion. Another example can be found here. A more in depth article covering religious violence in general, as well as violence against the LGBTQ community, can be read here. More on the matter of fundamentalists resorting to actual violence (including homicide) when faced with gay people can be read here, along with the manner in which this hatred is being exported, by design, to places such as Uganda and Russia.

Their fantasies of being able to lynch gays aren't "secret", they're openly broadcast. This is a tragically observable fact. As to how many of the fundies would act in pursuit of these fantasies, is at the moment, admittedly, difficult to quantify precisely, but you cannot ignore the hard evidence that these people exist, and are willing to pursue their hatred in a homicidal manner.

Plus, the people who want to pursue this hatred to a homicidal extent, have powerful financial and political connections. Right now, they have a President in the White House, who routinely validates their most fulminating nastiness. Even before Trump came along, they had powerful connections in the GOP, and were prepared to use their voting muscle to see religious extremists elected to office.

laklak wrote:Yeah, rape and lynching are exactly the same thing, how could I have missed that?

Er?? The point wasn't that lynchings and rapes are exactly the same thing. It was that as with rapes, it's possible that the lynchings you hear about are the ones that were prosecuted. I think you know that. The statement that 'I heard of these 3 or 4 lynchings being prosecuted over the years, and minorities are sometimes treated a bit better now so I doubt this is happening' is pretty weak. You know that too, right?

Calilasseia wrote:

Plus, the people who want to pursue this hatred to a homicidal extent, have powerful financial and political connections. Right now, they have a President in the White House, who routinely validates their most fulminating nastiness. Even before Trump came along, they had powerful connections in the GOP, and were prepared to use their voting muscle to see religious extremists elected to office.

I think the VP is actually a more compelling example of what you're talking about here. He might have been mostly silent so far, but I don't think he got to this position to profess love and tolerance.

Er...shouldn't this bill have been passed when Stove-pipe hats were a thing?

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that rapes are underreported, can anyone show a similar trend with lynchings?

Suppose there has not been a single lynching in the history of mankind. Would that makes this a bad law? The law is based on the theory that for certain protected classes of people the local jurisdictions cannot be completely trusted to carry out their own laws. In fact, the bill that passed unanimously in the senate did not pass the house, and so it was not enacted. And, thus states’ rights to ignore murderous hate crimes is preserved. https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/12/ ... rris-scott

And right on cue, A "pastor" in Detroit is arrested for murdering a transgender woman ...

Don't know offhand how Michigan fares with respect to dealing with hate crime, but I'm willing to bet that if this had happened in Tennessee or Alabama, the response would not have been so swift ...