People Who Fake Anti-Gay Hate Crimes Should Be Jailed So Bryan Fischer Can’t Lie

Consider this.

The reason a hate crime is treated by law enforcement as more “serious” is because it affects not only the victim, but all the people in the group the perpetrator targets. Just like terrorism.

Perhaps the best explanation comes from conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who, discussing federal hate crimes legislation, wrote in 2009 that a hate crime “is really two crimes — one against the individual and another against the group to which he belongs. By that definition, Shepard’s murder may be viewed as a terrorist act against all gays, who would have felt more fearful as a result.”

Violent anti-gay hate crimes happen far too often and are life-changing, physically and emotionally.

In late 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center commented on the data released in the FBI’s 2009 Hate Crime Statistics report and stated it showed “the LGBT community is, by far, the most victimized by violent hate crimes.” The SPLC also added, “Homosexuals are far more likely to be victims of a violent hate crime than any other minority group in the United States.”

So, to fake a hate crime is an act so egregious, it should be met with a jail sentence for those who perpetrate the fraud, (assuming there aren’t mental health considerations,) but especially when they are attempting to profit politically or financially for perpetrating the fraud.

Meet Kyle Wood, gay Republican. His photo, from his Twitter profile, is above.

Kyle Wood hails from Madison, Wisconsin, and is working for Republican U.S. congressional candidate Chad Lee. Lee is running against — and, reportedly, losing against, Democrat Mark Pocan.

“Kyle Wood, a campaign worker for the Republican congressional candidate Chad Lee, today recanted his statements about being assaulted and choked at his home on Oct. 24, according to Madison police,” the Daily Page reports:

Wood, who is gay, originally claimed he was attacked because of his politics and sexual orientation.

“It was terrifying,” Wood told Christian Schneider of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “All of a sudden, there was something around my neck, so I couldn’t breathe — I mean, I could breathe enough to live, but I couldn’t scream. All I could think about was getting it off my neck.”

Red Alert Politics, one of the few media outlets to not have updated its reporting, the same day Wood recanted, published this account:

Last Wednesday, Kyle Wood, a full-time volunteer with Republican Chad Lee’s Congressional campaign, was beaten inside his home in Madison by a yet-unidentified attacker who claimed that as a gay man Wood should be supporting the gay candidate for Congress.

The text messages obtained by Media Trackers show Philip Frank, Pocan’s partner, making sexually-charged comments to Wood before threatening him and making racist statements about the spouse of Chad Lee. The messages were apparently sent two or three days before the Wednesday beating.

After mocking Wood for supporting the Republican candidate, Frank wrote, “Remember your station in life and remember not to cross the husband of a powerful man. You are on shaky footing as it is, push much farther and you won’t have a future in this town, or any other.”

Wood has since told interviewers that he believes the attack on him – who attacked him he doesn’t know – could have been motivated by who he was supporting and the increasingly rancorous atmosphere of Wisconsin politics. “It probably had something to do with the fact that I support a Republican candidate running against an openly gay man,” he told Christian Schneider of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I think there’s just so much animosity at this point, people have just stopped being reasonable,” he commented.

Apparently, none of it was true.

Here are Wood’s recent tweets, going back to October 13, from his previously dormant Twitter account:

And this:

 

Joe Jervis, aka Joe.My.God., yesterday had this to say:

There were so many holes in Wood’s story, not the least of which were the “injuries” that were clearly inconsistent with his claims, that most LGBT news sites, including this one, did not report the story.  My “silence” on the “attack” spurred GOProud president Jimmy LaSalvia to taunt me on Twitter, ultimately telling me to “rot in hell” for my disbelief.

Jervis adds:

This latest bit of outrageous homocon fakery makes claims of being pushed off a bike or having a brick thrown through a window pale in repulsive comparison.  THIS time, the husband of a U.S. House candidate was smeared. Kyle Wood will surely get what is coming to him. But the worst part of his despicable crime is that now our enemies have yet another reason to suspect all future anti-gay violence.

Now, meet Bryan Fischer, the public face of the certified anti-gay hate group, American Family Association:

No “so rare,” as much as Fischer — a radical religious right extremist whose entire job seems to consist of attacking the LGBT community — would like his followers to believe.

Last November, Zack Ford at Think Progress reported:

According to just-released statistics from the FBI, 1,528 hate crimes were committed against people because of their sexual orientation in 2010, up from 1,436 in 2009. As Instinct Magazine points out, a similar number of hate crimes were committed based on religion (1,552), but only 7.2 percent of them were attacks against Christianity. This undermines the self-victimizing claims of groups like the National Organization for Marriage, who claim that anti-equality Christians are more significantly oppressed.

Any questions?