This article is troubling for several reasons.
(1) It blurs the distinction between “protected classifications” and “protected groups.” This is an important distinction which is made, I note, in each of the related search engine stories on the Internet. One reason this is important is to teach it to your readers who need to know the difference. Remember the related call for hate crime prosecution when whites were victims, and the police chief said he didn’t know if whites were a protected group? They’re a protected classification under the law; the concept of protected group is not involved. The blurring is deliberately done by ADL in their public statements and in their law enforcement training, and it behooves us to know what the law means without confusion.
A protected classification is everyone who shares the characteristic. Race (or perception thereof) applies to everyone as does religion, sexual orientation, sex, and so on. It is unlikely that a non-gay person would be set upon by a gang of criminal gays taunting him with “breeder, breeder,” but it is certainly possible. That is, the Colorado law does not create a protected group called gays, it purports to create a protected classification called sexual orientation, and literally includes all of the wildly various orientations.
There are literally protected groups, but only in one federal field and none in Colorado under the law, and these relate to language groups. In federal law, the speakers of non-English languages are protected groups, and the speakers of English are not a protected group.
In any case, every person alive is protected regarding race (or the perception thereof) by law, even if it is only a theoretical protection under today’s procedures. But it is critical for credibility and for educational purposes to maintain and teach this distinction. There was not one bit of difference between this article and the ADL presentation on this point.
(2) There was not one mention of the fact that the diverse white American peoples are included, or how we should claim their rights, and how we should discuss our rights (the vocabulary that police will understand). It is critical that we teach our own to exploit these laws, to file cross-complaints, and to make suitable allegations to turn the tables on those who have reveled in these unAmerican laws for so long. People are taught to “view with alarm,” but they should be rubbing their hands together, and saying, “Here is how we can use these laws and procedures, too!”
Don’t forget that the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was started under Roosevelt by ultra left-wing congressional activists who set about to use it to smear American Firsters and those who opposed entering WWII. When the Republicans took over Congress under Truman, they set about using it to identify anti-American communists. So things can always change.
(3) There was not one mention as to how to interrupt these bizarre laws, and one good way is what is known as “jury nullification” which means to overturn the law in individual cases. Our people need to be taught how to nullify the law as applied in any case against one of our own. It might be hard to teach how to use the law on the one hand, and how to obstruct the law on the other — but we’re a smart, capable people, we can do it.