Pastors attack Cohen on billBy Bartholomew Sullivansullivanb@shns.comAugust 2, 2007 WASHINGTON -- A group of Memphis pastors is encouraging people to call and write the offices of U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and other supporters of a hate crimes bill they believe restricts their right to preach against homosexuality.
The bill, which has already passed the House, provides federal assistance to local law enforcement to prosecute hate crimes. It is expected to come up for a Senate vote this week.
"It's a very hot potato," said the Rev. Chester Berryhill of the New Philadelphia Baptist Church near Poplar and Mendenhall. "This thing is bigger than the issue of abortion or anything else that's ever come up... You've got both sides on the abortion issue, but on this issue, it's really stirring up the ministers I've been talking to, black and white."
The Rev. LaSimba Gray of the New Sardis Baptist Church on East Holmes said he is a part of the Cohen letter-writing campaign and referred a caller to the Web site for Memphis City Churches (
mphscc.org). There, sample letters asking Cohen to reconsider his vote are provided. One reads in part: "This bill could quite possibly limit my right to share my faith on the subject of homosexuality."
The Web site advises callers to Cohen's office to "expect to be told that you have been misinformed."
The Web page provides links to the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association campaign to kill the bill in the Senate, the Washington-based Family Research Council's analysis of the bill and the Anaheim, Calif.-based Traditional Values Coalition's examination of the Senate's "tactic to push the homosexual agenda." The Memphis coalition lists an address in the Poplar Plaza shopping center.
Cohen, who said his Washington and Memphis offices have each fielded about 400 calls on the issue after church parking lots were leafleted over the weekend, took to the House floor Wednesday to accuse "a group of right-wing, evangelical Republicans, national in scope," of misleading pastors in his 9th Congressional District with misinformation.
Cohen said the group was seeking to influence both white and African-American preachers "that the bill will somehow quell their First Amendment rights to speak what they think about the Bible and about people's conduct. That's not true whatsoever." Cohen didn't mention homosexuality in the speech. In an interview, he said, "I suspect there's some politics involved at the local level."
The Hate Crimes bill (H.R. 1592) as passed by the House on a 237-180 vote on May 3 contains an amendment that states it will have no effect on free-speech rights, Cohen noted.
"That Crime Bill affects acts of violence, not acts of thought or speech," Cohen said. "It never has in this country's history, and it never will."
Berryhill said the ministers he is talking to simply don't accept Cohen's interpretation.
"Even though he says that, we just don't believe it," he said. "If you get up in a pulpit now, according to the way we understand it, and if you say homosexuality is a sin, you have 'attacked homosexuality.' That's the way the ministers are interpreting this...
"We want absolutely no restrictions on what a preacher can preach in the pulpit."
Gray said Cohen needs to return to Memphis and explain his vote.
"I think it's incumbent on Mr. Cohen to meet with the ministers in his district and share with us his reasons for supporting this legislation," Gray said. "We'd be open to discussing that because we're not going to be silent on this until we are assured that it will not impinge upon our freedom of speech and the use of the pulpit in the proclamation of the gospel."
Cohen said he plans to do one better. He's bringing U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., an ordained Methodist minister, to Memphis to explain why he, too, voted for the bill. African-Americans, who are victims of roughly half of hate crimes, will benefit from the expansion of the jurisdiction and funding provided in it, Cohen said.
Washington correspondent Bartholomew Sullivan can be reached at (202) 408-2726.
Letter to Cohen
The Memphis City Churches Web site (
mphscc.org) provides a sample letter to U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., that reads in part:
"Congressman Cohen, as a Christian, I am dissatisfied with your vote on May 3, 2007, in support of H.R. 1592. This bill will have a devastating effect on the rights and free speech of churches and pastors. We do not believe that homosexuals should have special privileges above other citizens. There are existing laws for anyone who is assaulted in each state... In the future, I pray that you reconsider your vote on these and other such issues and respect the rights of Christians in your state. -- Please provide your name, address, city, state zip code and email address."
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