Protecting the oppressed…from the religeous right

Dr. Julie Nemecek has some interesting thoughts on the conundrum that our President, George Bush, may be finding himself in with The Matthew Shepherd bill slowly making it’s way to his desk.  The bill, which many of our reader’s already know about, makes violence against people due to their gender or gender identity, a federal crime. It’s good protections not just for the transgender but also for, as the bill states, hate crimes against persons due to:

Section 2 Findings…actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim…

So if your transgender, it’s protective and it’s also true if your disabled. That’s right, the disabled are in fact a group even more subject to hate crimes than transgender people. Sadly, they can’t hardly speak for themselves at all. Thank God all we have is GID. Check out these factoids on hate crimes focused on the disabled:

• In 1994, due to the growing prevalence of studies and massive anecdotal instances of hate crimes against people with disabilities, the category of “disability” was added to the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990
• The U.S. Office on Crime Statistics reported in 2002 that in many cases, crime victims with disabilities have never participated in the criminal justice process, “even if they have been repeatedly and brutally victimized.” (the victims are often afraid of retaliation from the perpetrator; even the caregiver)
• disability-based bias crimes are all too frequently mislabeled as “abuse” and never directed from the social service or education systems to the criminal justice system. Even very serious crimes — including rape, assault, and vandalism — are too-frequently labeled “abuse.”

(data on hate crimes against the disabled from Civil Rights.org and UCLA Berkley Newsletter, “Flawed FBI reporting system undercounts disability hate crimes“. )

So back to President Bush and his conundrum. Dr. Nemecek sums it up nicely, at her blog, when she says, ”

He doesn’t need to ask “What would Jesus do?” because he has a more certain answer in asking “What DID Jesus do?” That answer is simple. Jesus befriended and sought to protect the oppressed of his day from the attacks of the religious right

In Jesus day, the Pharisees were a sect in the Jewish faith who would have been part of the religeous “right”. They were those who, in His words were:

• (vipers) “You offspring of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” (Matthew 3:7)
• (hypocrites) “But woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You keep locking people out of the kingdom of heaven! For you neither enter nor permit those trying to enter to go in. (Matthew 23:13)
• (unjust) “But woe to you Pharisees! You give a tenth of your mint, rue, and every herb, yet you neglect justice and love for God! But you should have done these things without neglecting the others. (Luke 11:42)

Jesus didn’t say that what the Pharisees taught was wrong…it’s how they lived and lived among the people that was wrong. It was their oppression of the people and unjust actions. That’s the conundrum President Bush has. To not sign the bill means he’s choosing to not protect the oppressed and siding with a vocal religious right. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to see that’s what Jesus did, protect and advocate for the oppressed, it just takes doing the stuff Jesus did.

(Bible references are from the Net Bible)