A bill recently passed by Michigan’s House of Representatives would make causing someone to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened based on their “gender identity or expression” a hate crime.
In Michigan, a hate crime is a felony punishable by imprisonment for up to two years or a fine up to $5,000, or both.
Instead of or in addition to imprisonment and fines for hurting someone’s feelings, if the defendant consents, a court could require the offender to complete a period of community service “intended to enhance the offender’s understanding of the impact of the offense upon the victim and the wider community.”
The bill, House Bill 4474, passed 59 to 50 in the Michigan House of Representatives on June 20.
The proposed legislation states that if an individual “maliciously and intentionally” intimidates another individual based on any of the characteristics listed below, they would be guilty of a felony hate crime.
How exactly the bill defines “Intimidate” can be seen below, which states that if someone simply feels terrorized, threatened, or frightened by another’s conduct, they can press charges.
The definition does exempt “constitutionally protected activity or conduct that serves a legitimate purpose.”
The bill defines “Gender identity or expression” as “having or being perceived as having a gender-related self-identity or expression whether or not associated with an individual’s assigned sex at birth,” which would include things like alternative names and pronouns.
Journalist Greg Price suggested in a tweet that HB 4474 becoming law would result in the misuse of pronouns becoming a felony in Michigan.
Misgendering is already prohibited under California state law in some cases. In February of this year Shake Shack was ordered to pay a former employee $20,000 after he was repeatedly misgendered by co-workers.
“California law prohibits intentional misgendering in the workplace,” said CA Civil Rights Department Director Kevin Kish in a statement after the settlement. “Intentional misgendering and other forms of discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression can be stressful and traumatic.”
On June 23 the Maine Senate shot down a bill sponsored by Rep. Katrina Smith (R-Palermo) that would have required parental approval for a public school employee to use a name or pronoun other than a child’s given name or pronoun corresponding to the gender on the child’s birth certificate.
Rep. Smith’s bill, LD 678, was one of many pieces of parental rights and school transparency legislation killed by Democratic lawmakers this session.
Also read:
- Democrats Block Parental Rights Policies, Including Bill to Let Parents “Opt Out” of Critical Race Theory Programming
- Bill to Protect the Fundamental Rights of Parents Fails After Partisan Votes
- Maine Lawmakers Approve Puberty Blockers, Cross-Sex Hormones for 16- and 17-Year-Olds — Without Parental Consent
24 Comments
Liberal LUNACY.
Hurting someones feelings!!!!! OMG, has no one ever watched Don Rickles, Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield, Chris Rock or Andrew Dice Clay to mention a few of the great comedians from the 60’s and 70’s.. You were in the audience to be insulted and picked on!!!
So, we are now becoming a society of namby-pamby individuals who have no backbone and whine at the slightest comment.
GROW UP!
it prohibits behavior that is WAY beyond just hurting someone’s feelings.
So another attempt to take away our constitutional rights?
It has nothing to do with “hurting someone’s feelings.” It has everything to do with targeting, harassing, and threatening individuals because of their race, color, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc. The purpose of this bill is to protect people. Interesting that this author focused exclusively on “gender identity or expression.” Homophobic much?
Yes, it has been a felony to maliciously target another because of sex, race or religion, and they’ve added gender. No big deal. The people outraged by this are the same people that claimed biden wanted to take away everyone’s hamburgers. People….there are enough real things in this country to be outraged by.
Thank you Whitmer. I didn’t want you the1st term and I surely didn’t want you a 2nd term. I can’t wait to finish my nursing program and leave Michigan. Pretty soon it will be illegal to glance at someone. This is being taken way too far now. Time for these people to grow up and quit being such babies.
The “Walking on Egg Shell Law”. So the legislature actually ran out of stupid ideas, they just decided to make straight people targets for innuendo laws so that feelings don’t get hurt. With prison sentences. These are the same idiots who gave a free pass to a man who violated guns in Lansing so he could shoot and kill MSU students in their dorms, then they blamed the guns. Just glad I bought my new home out of state, the rest of you stay here and enjoy your new restrictions to the 1st Amendent. Bye.
Good deal, next time a lib “maliciously and intentionally” intimidates someone by calling them white supremacist, cis, Karen, Transphobe or MAGA… see you in court.
What a retarded embicile. Now, are your feelings hurt? Poor baby.
“it prohibits behavior that is WAY beyond just hurting someone’s feelings.”
“Interesting that this author focused exclusively on “gender identity or expression.” Homophobic much?”
Lets unpack this carefully sweety. Everything on that list was already covered for like 100 years now. Its the surgical implants of “expression n identity” that make this a safety blanket for literally ANY word claimed by your never ending LGBTQPRXYZ++++ dysphorics so they can claim justifying hatred of breeders. Every day a new “expression” is added. A new gender discovered. You’ve demonstrated a tactic of going through social media accounts to attack people and ban them for anything covered by your ever expanding lexicon. There would be no point of virtue signature on this topic if it wasn’t designed to be abused in lawfare suits filed by ACLU&Friends.
Tell me this isnt just another tool of censorship for the left by not responding with a coherent counter to this claim.
I can’t wait until the SPOTUS gets hold of this garbage.
Of course the law speaks to a standard of how a “reasonable” person might be offended under the law. Of course there is nothing reasonable about expecting rational people to know how to address these precious flowers.. Perhaps anyone who anticipates that they might be a victim should be required to wear an identity/profile tag to ensure that we rational people know how to address them. Without an objective standard of acceptable behavior the law is invalid.
Psychological counseling might help.
Complete waste of time,money and brainpower. Just stupid stuff to argue about. Get a spine and quit being pampered entitled waste of oxygen
Welcome to Larry Fink’s, George Soros’, Bill Gates’, and the WEF Mafia’s America.
Biden is not president, he is a puppet.
Sew the state. . remember the first amendment?
So basically this is ridiculous because harassment is already a crime.
What recourse do I have if and when I feel or actually am offended, frightened, threatened, terrorized? I may be white, Caucasian, female by sex and by gender, traditionally pronouned, Christian, a senior citizen, French Canadian by descent, etc., etc., etc., but I still belong in ALL these categories. Yet I suffer from the same persecution because of these “identities,” when all I want is to be left alone to go about my business, without all this crap jammed down my throat.
Has anyone ever noticed that “woke” is past-tense? Time for the “woke” to wake up to reality and take responsibility for themselves and their actions, instead of heaping the blame on everyone else.
There isn’t enough room in our prisons for this kind of bullshit. It’s time to reverse this imbalance of so-called gay rights. This isn’t about equality nor even fundamental rights. It’s time that gays be held accountable for harassing straight people for simple being straight. There appears to be a majority of gays who are out to create pain for those who simply have different beliefs.
Let the gays go ahead and call people homophobes – see how they like hiring lawyers and sitting in prison.
This bill is very broad and left open to how each law officer or prosecutor vies the meaning of it. IF a person “Feels” threatened by someone calling them a he and they consider themselves a she and the person gets charged for it, toe that is an abuse of the law and needs to be thrown out, however, If a person is repeatedly being harassed and verbally abuse to the point that the victim feels that their life could be in jeopardy, that should be a crime. There needs to be more clarification and not so broad that it is open to how a person perceives the meaning.
Ken, if the shoe fits.
Whites have supremacy,
Straights bully gays to the point of wanting to die.
I could give one less of a fuck if more of you cucks go to prison.
How about you make it illegal to use the “N” word. If you have a penis you’re a BOY and a vagina you’re a girl. sorry I follow the laws of biology
Don’t worry, This law has nothing to do with us citizens. It was passed specifically for President Trump. They think they are gonna get the President on some stupid bullshit law!!!! GRETCHEN WHITMER IS A TYRANT!!!!!!!
Once again, the left take a good thought and moves it to the height of stupidity, and then pushes back by name-calling and more stupidity. You cannot legislate morality. No, simpletons, hurting somebody’s feelings isn’t nice, but once you go down this road, you’ll all be sued by your own name-calling. A woman called me “obtuse” because she thinks a human fetus is a parasite and deserves to be aborted. The more abortions, the happier she will be. Soon, I’ll be able to sue her for calling me obtuse.
There doesn’t seem to be a single good idea that the left can’t destroy by blowing it up to a pathetic level. Pretty soon you will go to jail for not bowing down to minorities, and it will be legal to deny restaraunt and hotel service to straight whites under a new “two wrongs make a right” law.
I really worry for my grandchildren they are growing up in a world where it’s okay to do crime .don’t offend certain people but you can be offended that’s okay parents have no rights and the first amendment well that’s out the window. The military is not like it was when I served very weak we are losing more rights as time goes by and you got people actually teaching our children it’s okay to be a transgender or gay parents can’t do nothing about it if you’re white you’re bad because over what happened over 200 years ago and further back I got news for you different time different time and Joe Floyd he wasn’t a hero he was a criminal a thug did he deserve what happened to him no he didn’t the same person that attacked a pregnant woman became a hero talk about BS ..as God go this country is pushing God out of the picture more and more whatever happened to a pledge allegiance to the flag in schools prayer in schools taken away by the liberals Lord help us all