FIRST AMENDMENT ON FIRE!
The House has voted to expand the legal definition of anti-Semitism, while pro-Hamas protests rage at college campuses around the country.
Sara Gonzales isn’t a fan of the pro-Hamas protesters, but she knows that throwing out the First Amendment isn’t the way to combat them.
“Apparently, Republicans don’t care about the First Amendment anymore,” she says, calling the bill a “knee-jerk reaction.”
The bill targets the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism and is intended to strengthen the 1964 Civil Rights Act enforcement on college campuses.
One of the definitions included is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”
“Last time I checked, it’s not illegal to hate someone for any reason,” Gonzales says. “It kind of sucks, and it kind of makes you a jerk but shouldn’t be illegal.”
More definitions contain that anti-Semitism is “accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group or even for acts committed by non-Jews” and “denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g., gas chambers) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.”
“Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and say that’s a hate speech bill,” Gonzales says.
