Are hate crime laws that give gay people special protections against violent crimes a sneaky conspiracy to persecute Christians?

The short answer is no.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check has the longer answer: Hate Crimes Laws: A Conspiracy to ‘Eradicate’ the Christian Right?

Did you know that the passage of hate crimes laws is actually a conspiracy to squelch religious freedom?

Yes….that weak and long-suffering entity known as the Christian Right is claiming that efforts to outlaw targeted hate crimes against homosexual persons through legislation constitute “a guarded effort to ‘eradicate’ their beliefs.”

Stephen Webster of The Raw Story reports that:

A Christian group in Michigan has filed a lawsuit alleging that a package of hate crimes laws named after murder victim Matthew Shepard is an affront to their religious freedom.

Webster reports that the suit was:

“filed by the Thomas More Law Center — which bills itself as the religious answer to the American Civil Liberties Union — [and] the complaint claims that protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people “is an effort to eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.”

The suit was placed on behalf of American Family Association of Michigan president Gary Glenn, along with pastors Rene Ouellette, Levon Yuille and James Combs.

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old gay man from Wyoming who was tied to a fence and beaten to death in 1998. A foundation carrying his name played an important role in helping to broaden hate crimes definitions to cover LGBT people. President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. The Thomas More lawsuit, filed in a U.S. district court in Michigan, names Attorney General Eric Holder as a defendant.

Claiming “there is no need” to extend hate crimes definitions, Thomas More chief counsel Richard Thompson attempted to minimize the impact of violent crimes against homosexuals. “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,” Thompson wrote on the group’s Web site.

“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.”

Let me get this straight: The Christian Right is arguing that basic principles of humanity, and the rights to freedom from violence and discrimination should be decided on the basis of numbers of crimes against a minority group?

The Thomas More Law Center is notorious for representing the defendants in the Dover Pennsylvania “intelligent design” creationism trial, and for receiving an epic judicial spanking from the judge (a George W. Bush appointee).