Me 1, Stoops 0

I've long had a disagreement with Michael Stoops. Michael has directed the National Coalition for the Homeless for eons and has been a strong advocate for hate crime legislation to protect homeless people. When I ran into him at a speaking gig at Seattle University a few years ago I told him he'd get much better results if he stopped calling them hate crimes and started calling them what they are, terrorist acts against the homeless population.

Last week the Senate successfully attached a hate crimes rider protecting people of maligned sexual orientations and gender choices, as well as disabled people, to the war funding bill. It may be vetoed. But getting it in a bill in national legislation at all was a major success. And that success has in part been credited to the fact that the bill's sponsors characterized it as anti-terrorist legislation.

Last night I listened to a podcast of Bill Maher's HBO Friday night show. You would think that in commenting about the legislation, Bill Maher, a raging liberal, would have been all for it, but it turns out he hadn't heard that it was about terrorism. Neither had his pro-hate crimes laws guests. So there was again the silly argument, stoked by Maher, to the effect, "What are we doing making an emotion illegal?" Which is precisely the argument you undercut when you recognize that it's terrorism against a segment of the population that you are addressing, not the emotions felt toward them as the crimes are committed. You can have your hate, just don't commit acts designed to terrorize whole demographics.

Meanwhile, Dan Savage appeared on the Stephen Colbert Show and got it right, referring to hate crimes against gays as terrorism. He also almost told Stephen Colbert how laws against terrorism against gays also protected heterosexuals like Stephen Colbert, but Colbert changed the subject. I would have told him a lot of people think his marriage is either fictional or a marriage of convenience. He's too pretty to be straight.

Of the three of us Colbert looks the gayest. If you didn't know better you'd think Savage was an off-duty GI in Iraq, or a gay-basher himself. I don't look gay, I look like a satisfied pig farmer.

Anyway, I hope other homeless activists are alert and noticing what works.