General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: He hated gay people. His brand of religion said that was okay. [View all]joshcryer
(62,287 posts)And I think while it was absolutely a mass hate crime, the guy was fed some seriously sick shit in his religious associations. If you have a "scholar" saying "gays must all be killed" I don't know how much that can be considered protected speech. When the militia talked about killing people they were arrested and ostracized. There is a good documentary about the militia diaspora (how many of them went to Alaska, etc). While the militia and its cohorts did not do mass shootings, everyone knows of the Oklahoma City bombing. And bands of militia are still arrested to this day (see Bundy's group of fascists). Hiding hate speech under religion is a difficult prospect to get rid of, but it needs to be dealt with the same way that the militia was dealt with.
Here's the documentary: