Would the proposed federal Thought Crime law allow people to be prosecuted for speech alone?
The bills that have been introduced in Congress in recent years target only violent actions, not peaceful expressions of opinion (only someone who “willfully causes bodily injury” or “attempts to cause bodily injury” could be charged). Nevertheless, by ratifying the Thought Crimes mentality, this bill paves the way for future expansions of its scope in ways that could eventually threaten freedom of speech and religion. The 1990 “Hate Crime Statistics Act” (Public Law 101-275), for example, defines “hate crimes” much more broadly as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice,” and the statistics collected under that law include even non-violent offenses such as “intimidation” (in fact, nearly half–48.9 percent–of the “hate crimes” reported in 2005 consisted of “intimidation” alone). It would be a very simple matter for a future Congress to change the definition of a “hate crime” subject to federal prosecution to match the more sweeping definition of “hate crimes” on which the federal
