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American Family Association of Michigan protest Hate Crime Legislation 2010

Last week a group of Michigan Christian right activists and church leaders filed a civil law suit against US Attorney General Eric Holder over the Hate Crime Act of which they allege violates their civil rights.

The Complaint states that Christians can now become the target of federal investigations and charges based on the fact that an individual opposes the homosexual agenda.

“On account of … the Hate Crimes Act, plaintiffs are targets for government scrutiny, questioning, investigation, surveillance, and other adverse law enforcement actions and thus seek judicial reassurance that they can freely participate in their speech and related religious activities without being investigated or prosecuted by the government or becoming part of official records because of their Christian beliefs,” the lawsuit explains.

The suit was filed last Wednesday by the Thomas More Law Center in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Pastors Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette, James Combs and Gary Glenn, who is the president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

“There is no legitimate law enforcement need for this federal law,” said Richard Thompson, president of the Law Center. “Of the 1.38 million violent crimes reported in the U.S. by the FBI in 2008, only 243 were considered as motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.

“Moreover, Eric Holder himself testified at a Senate hearing that the states are doing a fine job in this area,” he said.

“This is part of the list of political payoffs to homosexual advocacy groups for support of Barack Obama in the last presidential election. The sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin. It elevates those persons who engage in deviant sexual behaviors, including pedophiles, to a special protected class of persons as a matter of federal law and policy,” he said.

The lawsuit cites the death of Andrew Anthos, a 72-year-old Detroit man  where it states that he was “allegedly” the victim of a “hate crime” because of his “sexual orientation.” In that case, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force “blamed … Plaintiff Glenn’s ‘homophobic rants’ for causing his death.”

According to the lawsuit, the Task Force director said, “It is appalling hypocrisy for these forces to pretend that their venomous words and organizing have no connection to the plague of hate violence against gay people, including the murder of Mr. Anthos.”

Anthos also was cited by Sen. Carl Levin as evidence of the need to extend federal “hate crimes” legislation to include “sexual orientation” as a protected classification. But the lawsuit said police and a medical examiner determined that Anthos died of natural causes.

Our researched however came up with a different story about the Anthos death altogether. According to a press release issued in Feb. 2007 by Matt Foreman, the Executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force at the time, Anthos was attacked with a metal pipe and beaten on the back of the head after being questioned whether he was gay or not by an assailant . Due to his injuries, the 72-old was paralyzed from the neck down. He eventually went into a coma and died. His attacker has not been apprehended or identified.

Below is a copy of the Hate Crimes/Eric Holder Complaint:

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