Family Research Council targets Lamar over hate-crimes bill

Conservative Christian group is telephoning local voters and asking them to call Alexander in opposition to "special rights" for gay people

Email | Print By E. Thomas Wood

Charmaine Yoest, Family Research Council

A major national religious conservative group is mounting a telephone campaign intended to keep Republican Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander on the ideological straight and narrow when it comes to hot-button social issues.

The Family Research Council is placing automated calls (sometimes known as "robo-calls") to Nashville households about legislation that would include attacks motivated by the victim's sexual orientation among the offenses covered by federal hate-crime laws.

In the recording, an audio excerpt from which is available at this link, FRC Vice President for Communications Charmaine Yoest warns voters about "legislation that would provide extra punishment for certain crimes committed against specially protected classes of people." Yoest urges the call recipients to telephone Alexander's Nashville office and urge that the senator "vote 'no' on any hate-crimes bill that grants special protection to people because of their sexual preferences."

Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Washington, D.C.-based FRC, said on Monday that there are concerns within his Christian-oriented group that Alexander is "on the fence" regarding a hate-crimes bill now pending in the Senate. The House of Representatives in March passed the "Matthew Shepard Act," named for the gay Wyoming college student murdered in a celebrated 1998 case. Parallel legislation was attached to a major defense measure that sponsors withdrew last week amid controversy over issues related to the war in Iraq.

"We know it's going to come up in the Senate again," McClusky said, and so the FRC decided to mount a push now. Besides Alexander, it targets several other lawmakers thought to be wavering on the bill. McClusky said phone campaigns are also underway in the constituencies of GOP Senators John Warner of Virginia and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, as well as right-of-center Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, both of whom are up for election in 2008.

Alexander did vote for a somewhat similar bill in 2004. It's a reasonable inference that doing so crossed a bright red line in the view of social conservatives, as there are few if any legislative precedents for the recognition of homosexuality as an element to be addressed under federal discrimination laws.

"We're undecided on this bill," Alexander spokesperson Lee Pitts told NashvillePost.com. "We don't know the final form it's going to take."

Pitts said that while the senator's local office stays busy all the time with constituent calls, he has not heard of any notable uptick in call volume on the hate-crimes issue.

The Family Research Council is a leading advocate of religious conservative causes in the U.S. Its other recent stances have included opposition to allowing a Hindu prayer at the opening of a session of Congress and opposing the president's nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to serve as Surgeon General (on the grounds of the nominee's past support of embryonic stem cell research).