D.C. Bishop Seeks Change in Hate Crimes Law The following are remarks made at the White House on April 6 by the Rt. Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, prior to President Clinton’s remarks regarding the Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
ood morning Mr.
President and distinguished guests. I am pleased to speak with you today, but saddened
almost beyond speaking by the cause that brings me here. However, the depth of my sadness
at the atrocities that make the Federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act necessary compels me to
speak. I begin from the principle that all life is sacred, because I follow a God who
created all humans in the image of God. Because we are all created in God’s image,
violence against any one of us is a sacrilege and blasphemy against the Creator. For these
reasons, I dare not stand silent.
While we watch what is unfolding in Kosovo with ever-increasing horror, we must not let those distant hate crimes distract us from the hate crimes here on our own soil. I grew up in Mississippi when a 14 year-old Black child named Emmett Till was shot dead and dumped in the river in 1955 for daring to speak to a white woman in the grocery store, but in my lifetime we have made real progress at ending senseless physical and emotional violence directed at people because of their race or creed. We can all be proud of that progress, but the gruesome murder in Jasper, Texas last year reminds us that work is not yet complete.
The work we must now begin is for national legislation that seeks to end crimes of hate based on the sexual orientation, or gender, or disability of the victim. The need has been made horrifyingly clear to us recently. We have had a crucifixion in the Wyoming winter, and a man beaten to death in Alabama and his body burned on a pyre of automobile tires just weeks ago. Two loving and gentle men brought down by fire and ice, icons of hate, because of how they loved. And in my own ministry, I have known far too many women who suffered violence simply because they were women.
People of faith cannot stand quietly by while such evil persists in our midst. Anyone who claims to speak for God and says that these crimes are justified, that the victims got what they deserved, does not know my God. I follow a God who was very clear about what was required of every son and daughter of Abraham: that we do justice, and . . . love kindness, and . . . walk humbly with . . . God. [Micah 6:8]Those of us in the Christian tradition have been further commanded to love one another as God loves us. Each of these requirements of God requires an answer to hate. Hate which I join the President in asking the Congress to help us contain, and someday end altogether. Every known and unknown victim of hate cries out for us to do justice. Their grieving families and all those who loved them remind us of their kindness. The sacredness of their lives demands that we walk humbly before the God who created them, and that we love them as fervently as God loves us, as we journey toward a future without hate. Thank you.