Crackdown on Christians: Philadelphia's Hate Crimes Regime
Crackdown on Christians: Philadelphia's Hate Crimes Regime
Lee Duigon / The Chalcedon Foundation
Imagine you woke up one morning to discover that, in your city, singing a hymn or reciting a Bible verse in public was a criminal offense.
Michael Marcavage doesn't have to imagine it. He lives in Philadelphia — a city that has, for the sake of "gay rights," imposed one of the harshest "hate speech" regimes in North America. Peacefully opposing the advancement of sodomy can land you in prison, if you do it in Philadelphia.
Marcavage and three of his friends face felony hate crime charges that could net each forty-seven years in prison. Charges have been dropped against another six of the original "Philadelphia 11," with one juvenile in the group removed from the case.
Police arrested the eleven on October 10. Marcavage led the peaceful protest against a homosexual street fair called "Outfest." On December 14, a Philadelphia judge ruled that the prosecutor could proceed with the case.
"Do I expect to go to prison?" Marcavage said. "I didn't expect to be prosecuted so aggressively, so why should I expect not to go to jail? The prosecutor calls us hateful and disgusting people; the district attorney says the Bible is hate speech, and they're out to make an example of us." ...
"Over the last ten years," William Devlin said, "I've been to pastor after pastor in this city, trying to get them to put pressure on the elected officials who've been pushing the homosexual agenda. They're all afraid to speak up. They're like the frog in the kettle: they've sat there in silence for all this time while the gays kept turning up the water temperature. Now it's come to a boil, and they're still in the pot."
Philadelphia's political leaders, he said, present themselves as born-again, evangelical Christians while energetically promoting "gay rights" at the expense of Christianity.
http://www.chalcedon.edu/art
icles/0501/050101-1duigon.php
Posted by Editor at January 5, 2005 09:23 AM
