18.9% of all US Hate Crimes Related to Religion

"A fall FBI report on hate crimes lets people know that the problem is trending in the wrong direction. Bias-related criminal incidents jumped 7.8 percent from 2005 to 2006.

Race remains the biggest problem. The report said 51.8 percent of the 7,720 single incident cases were racial bias; 18.9 percent, religion; 15.5 percent, sexual orientation bias; 12.7 percent, ethnicity/national origin; and 1 percent was against people with disabilities.

The report found that being black in America continues to be a lightning rod for hate. Of the 4,737 single-bias hate crimes, 66.2 percent were anti-black. But hate crimes don't all go in one direction. The report said 21.3 percent were anti-white; 6.1 percent were against people in a multiple-race group; 4.9 percent were anti-Asian/Pacific Islander; and 1.5 percent were anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native."

Kansas City Star, Feb. 26, 2008

[Stats] Most Americans, Protestants Favor Hate Crimes Expansion

"Just a week after faith-based groups denounced the House vote approving the legislation, the Gallup Poll revealed 68 percent of Americans are for the expansion while only 27 percent oppose it. Moreover, 65 percent of Protestant and other non-Catholic Christians said they would favor it.

[...]

Highly religious Americans were less likely to favor expanding the federal hate crime laws than those who seldom attend church. Still, 64 percent of those who attend church weekly expressed that they favor the bill. Among the less religious, 67 percent of those who attend church almost every week or monthly support the expansion and 73 percent of Americans who seldom or never attend church also favor it.

[...]

Conservative Christian leaders say expanding the Hate Crimes Act could silence believers who view homosexuality as sinful."

Christian Post, May. 17 2007

ACLU Cheers House Passage of Hate Crimes Legislation

"For the first time, the ACLU was able to announce its full support for hate crimes legislation. In the past, the organization has not been able to support hate crime bills because they were written in a way that threatened constitutionally protected speech. But the legislation introduced by Representative John Conyers (D-MI) shows that it is possible to protect targets of hate crimes without jeopardizing free speech or association rights."

ACLU.org, 5/3/2007

[Warning] US evangelicals aim to influence European law

”—In Britain, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an organization founded by American evangelical leaders, is funding a lawsuit brought by a Christian man who was fired for refusing to work on Sunday. It is also helping to develop the legal strategy.
—In Sweden, ADF played a key role in persuading the Supreme Court to dismiss charges against Ake Green, a pastor who was convicted of hate-crime charges after he delivered a sermon in which he called gays a “deep cancerous tumor in the entire society.”
—In Aruba and the Czech Republic, Pat Robertson’s legal organization, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), helped defeat bills that would have legalized same-sex unions.
—In France, ACLJ affiliate ECLJ (the European Center for Law and Justice), is staging a legal challenge against an antisect law that it says is being used to clamp down on evangelical Christian churches.
—And on the European Union level, ECLJ is lobbying to block funding for embryonic stem-cell research.”

evangelicalright.com April 20 2007

See also Christian Science Monitor Oh, and use protection!