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Adopted by the
Women’s Division
General Board of Global Ministries
October 18, 1998
Stamford, Connecticut
Recommended that the Women’s Division expand existing programs and assist United Methodist Women to implement General Conference resolutions which address hate crimes through the following means:
1. Provide biblically based resources that address hate crimes and intolerance.
2. Create resources to help United Methodist Women analyze the language of intolerance among groups that use religious language and emotionally charged images to camouflage their intentions.
3. Organize letter writing campaigns and denominational and ecumenical delegations to meet with government officials to advocate passage , funding and implementation of strong hate crimes laws and to hold congressional hearings on hate crimes.
4. Provide funding to local, community-based networks who educate for tolerance and/or provide support for the victims of hate crimes.
5. Track hate crimes through news media and other sources to provide information to the Women’s Division and General Board of Global Ministries who work in partnership with other organizations tracking hate crimes to expand a national data base of such incidents.
6. Engage in a media campaign to promote tolerance and report hate crimes. Monitor, respond to and support media that promotes tolerance while challenging programs that teach hate, stereotypes, prejudice and/or bigotry.
7. Educate members that silence equals complicity with hate. When jokes, disparagements, stereotypes or references to violence based on identity or status quo without response, we participate in the growing culture of intolerance, hate and death.
8. Organize and advocate for state and local hate crime laws that include any crimes committed based upon race, ethnicity, culture, status, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability and/or class.
9. Work with ecumenical and interfaith groups to create worship resources and to hold worship services for tolerance.
10. Work with diverse grass roots and national organizations to create joint strategies and actions to address hate crimes.
11. Work through local organizations and local schools to review policies and training programs related to various forms of discrimination and sexual harassment based on gender and sexual identity.
12. Contact all governors urging that they appoint a task force to investigate hate crimes.
The Women’s Division and United Methodist Women have a long history of being on the "cutting edge" of important social issues related to race and gender. Our predecessors resisted slavery, lynching, segregation and economic discrimination as well as sexism in all its forms and the exploitation of children. Today, we must expand our efforts to address the increasing incidents of hate crimes.
One source of hate crimes are hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity groups and Neo-Nazis. For example, some hate groups initiate people into their groups by requiring them to do acts of hate, such as assaulting racial-ethnic people and burning churches with racial-ethnic or multicultural membership. It is estimated that some 70 historic African American churches have been burned in 1998 and over the last five years, over 300 churches have burned in hate-related arson. Targets of race-based hate crimes have included all racial and ethnic groups ( Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, European Americans, Middle Eastern Americans and immigrants)
But, it is not just hate groups who perpetrate such crimes. According to a recent study by the American Psychological Association,"Most hate crimes are carried out by otherwise law-abiding young people who see little wrong with their actions. Alcohol and drugs sometimes help fuel these crimes, but the main determinant appears to be personal prejudice.... Such prejudice is most likely rooted in an environment that disdains someone who is 'different' or sees that difference as threatening. For example, Dr. Karen Franklin, a forensic psychology fellow at the Washington Institute for Mental Illness and Research and Training, has found that, in some settings offenders perceive that they have societal permission to engage in violence against homosexuals." (Source: "Hate Crimes Today: An Age-Old Foe in Modern Dress," by the American Psychological Association, © 1998, http://www.apa.org/pubinfo/hate/)
An example of giving societal permission to engage in violence against
gay and lesbian people is the recent media campaign with the misleading slogans of "Truth in Love" and "Hope Not Hate." Such slick campaigns, though couched in seemingly kind and Christian words, promote bigotry nevertheless by caricaturing gay and lesbian people as hopeless, desperate people without family love. Christian groups like the ones sponsoring this campaign have consistently waged campaigns of fear and misinformation in places like Colorado, Oregon and other states to prevent laws which legislate against discrimination and violence against lesbians and gay men.
The details of the two most recent and vicious hate crimes have painfully brought this insidious national trend into focus:
On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., an African American, was picked up by three white men in a truck. They took him to a wooded area, beat him, chained him to the truck and dragged him for two miles, ripping his head and arms from his torso.
October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming gay student, was lured from a bar by two men, taken to a remote site, strung up on a rail fence, beaten with a gun, crushing his skull, robbed of even his shoes and left to die in thirty-degree weather. Later that day, the two perpetrators beat two teen-aged Hispanic young men, Emiliano Morales and Jeremy Herrara. Matthew Shepard died on October 12 without regaining consciousness from head wounds so serious that doctors could not do surgery.
John Wesley passionately condemned slavery and condescending attitudes toward indigenous people. Although the church has stumbled at times over slave owning, segregation and racism, there has been a stream of voices of all races through the years speaking against the injustice to respond to God’s equal call to all people.
The United Methodist Church today stretches to understand and resist the global web of racism that impacts people all over the world and diminishes the humanity of both victims and oppressors. More than one-hundred references in The Book of Resolutions of the United Methodist Church address various aspects of our commitment to the elimination of racism in all its forms. In particular, the 1996 resolution, "Global Racism: A Violation of Human Rights," states that United Methodists will "Work in coalition with secular groups to monitor and actively combat the activities of hate groups, extremist groups, and militia groups in the United States and other parts of the world." (The Book of Resolutions of the United Methodist Church, 1996, page 256)
The United Methodist Church is in great conflict over the place of gay and lesbian people in the church, but it has been able to state that in the larger society, sexual orientation is not grounds for revoking human rights.
In the "Social Principles" of the Book of Discipline it states that "Moreover, we support efforts to stop violence and other forms of coercion against gays and lesbians." (Par. 66 H). The Women’s Division, in particular, is mandated to address related issues through the 1996 resolution, "Teens At Risk," which addresses the high risk of suicide among youth who are dealing with questions of sexual orientation. It charges the Women’s Division to "...use available channels ...to provide factual information, program ideas and resources...for use by individuals and groups. These materials could include books, guides for developing support groups, suggestions for ways to find counselors/therapists, supportive clergy and/or congregations, and organizations in a particular area."
According to "The White House Conference on Hate Crimes" web site, (http://www.whitehouse.gov/Initiatives/OneAmerica/whc.html) "Teenagers and young adults account for a significant proportion of the country’s hate crimes -- both as perpetrators and victims." Children are not born with hatred, they are taught hatred. We, as part of society, have a responsibility to condemn hate violence but also to teach our children not to hate in the first place.