by Raymond Wolfe, LifeSite News:
Saying that COVID is a ‘Chinese bio-weapon’ could get you on a proposed government speech registry in Minnesota.
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (LifeSiteNews) — Minnesota residents may soon end up on a government database if they discuss the origins of COVID-19 or quote Bible verses that criticize homosexuality.
Minnesota’s Democrat-controlled legislature last month approved a bill that requires the state Department of Human Rights to collect allegations of perceived “discrimination” or microaggressions in a new “bias” registry.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The proposal would allow people to submit reports of alleged “slurs or verbal attacks” and similar incidents, even if they do not constitute crimes, according to the St. Cloud Times.
Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation to create a bias registry in January before adding the language to a sweeping, left-wing public safety bill, Senate File 2909, which also imposes severe restrictions on gun ownership.
SF 2909 allocates $934,000 to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights to “gather, analyze, and report on discrimination and hate incidents throughout Minnesota” over the next two years.
It specifically requires the department to:
solicit, receive, and compile information from community organizations, school districts and charter schools, and individuals regarding incidents committed in whole or in substantial part because of the victim’s or another’s actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, or disability.
The bill does not explicitly prevent collecting names of reported offenders.
And it notably includes “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression” as protected classes, meaning that opposition to LGBT ideology could land someone on the registry.
At a hearing about the measure in January, Minnesota Human Rights commissioner Rebecca Lucero said that the database would ensure that “little incidents” like perceived derogatory comments are “documented” and “tracked” by the government. She cited the hypothetical example of someone yelling a slur at a person on the side of the road while driving.
For many such incidents, which “may not be criminal,” she said, “there is no coordinated, consistent tracking, reporting, analysis and recommendations for next steps,” Lucero lamented.
“So, under this bill, if someone gets their feelings hurt, it generates an incident report with the state Department of Human Rights,” Minnesota Republican Rep. Walter Hudson tweeted in response.
Hudson blasted the initiative as a way “to manufacture legitimacy around the narrative of ‘hate’ as a growing problem and lobby further government action.”
“We should not be policing, tracking, or documenting speech.”
Summing it up, Commissioner Lucero confirms that there is no objective standard for determining what constitutes “hate speech,” but suggests we should have government documented incident reports anyway “so that you can know what is going on in your community.”
7/8 pic.twitter.com/Ch1Tb8iG4b
— Walter Hudson (@WalterHudson) January 18, 2023
Minnesota Democrat: Talking about COVID origins could be a ‘bias incident’
Under Senate File 2909, so-called bias incidents could include everything from arguing that COVID-19 is a bioweapon to wearing a shirt supporting Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, according to one of the bill authors.
During debate on the House floor, Minnesota Republican Rep. Harry Niska pressed Democratic Rep. Samantha Vang on whether saying that coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab should be logged in the bias registry.
“If a Minnesotan writes an article claiming or arguing that COVID-19 is a Chinese bio-weapon that leaked from a lab in Wuhan, and someone reports that article to the Department of Human Rights, is that something that the Department of Human Rights should put in their bias registry under your bill?” he asked.
