Too often when Congress can’t find anything to do, its members get busy duplicating laws that are already on the books and calling them by new names.

Now that all the corporations that were allowed to run amok have been bailed out, the House and Senate approved a bill tied to heinous crimes from a decade ago. President Obama signed it into law, and Christian pastors protested Monday on the steps of the Capitol.

The $681 billion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 includes near the end, third division from the bottom, a revised federal hate crimes law. H.R. 2647, a bill designed to appropriate money to the nation’s military branches, programs, soldiers and veterans, includes the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

Shepard was the gay college student from Wyoming who was beaten, tied to a fence and left to die on the prairie. Byrd was the black man chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death in rural Texas.

Their sexual orientation and race led others to commit the worst of crimes — murder — which is a capital crime, state or federal. Capital crimes mean death row and execution or life in prison if the state has not legalized capital punishment.

Exactly what is the distinction that makes one person’s murder less heinous or significant than another person’s murder? The crime always ends in death. No one has found a good reason to murder someone. Self-defense doesn’t count because no one is convicted when a jury rules the death was self-defense. In that case, it’s a killing, not a murder. The basis is intent.

People should not murder gay or black men any more than they should murder Hispanic children, white women or Asian senior citizens.

Christian pastors told news media they are concerned the law will mean they cannot preach about the sin of homosexuality with the revised law. Their speech will be stifled.

In Canada, it’s already against the law for anyone to disparage alternative lifestyles from the street corner or the pulpit.

The bizarre justification for the revisions is because such crimes interfere with the commerce of communities. Gay rights and transgender organizations tout the law as a victory. It seems rather insulting to tie human life to the almighty dollar, but that’s Congress. Maybe that was the wording needed to pass muster for sticking a social issue into a defense spending bill.

Division E, which is the hate crimes act, mentions several times the law is intended to publish the acts or results of thoughts against the groups named for protection. Either to appease critics or assure them, the tail end includes these provisions:

“Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow a court, in any criminal trial for an offense described under this division or an amendment made by this division, in the absence of a stipulation by the parties, to admit evidence of speech, beliefs, association, group membership, or expressive conduct unless that evidence is relevant and admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Nothing in this division is intended to affect the existing rules of evidence.

“This division applies to violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of a victim.

“Nothing in this division, or an amendment made by this division, shall be construed or applied in a manner that infringes any rights under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

Two things leave a gray area that can legitimately concern Christians. Beliefs, association and group membership will not be allowed as evidence unless both parties in the trial stipulate to their admission. The second is that first amendment is lowercase instead of uppercase.

The rights to be secure in one’s home and person didn’t seem to matter much after Sept. 11, 2001.

Property damage, stalking, bodily harm, sexual assault and murder statutes cover crimes that can happen because someone hates another person. With that definition, all murders are hate crimes.

This law is unnecessary. Congress should focus on following the existing U.S. Constitution rather than assigning special consideration to certain groups, which violates the equal protection clause. Prosecute the crime; the motivation is irrelevant once a crime is committed.

— Young is a Register-Herald columnist. E-mail: ynerissa@

verizon.net.

© 2009 by Nerissa Young