Peace

October 8, 2000

Hi,

I got this from a friend, who lives in Europe, it's legislation that was

passed here to reduce hate crimes.

FOOTNOTE: "A white, married, Republican from what he calls an

'ultraconservative' rural district, Ponder, 45, rose to speak moments after

the

Georgia House voted 83-82 to SHELVE a proposal to make crimes carry

tougher penalties when they are motivated by hatred." Then, Rep. Ponder

gave the speech you just read above [below]. Republicans and Democrats alike

gave

Ponder two standing ovations, then outlawed all hate crimes by a vote of 116-

49. Georgia Governor Roy Barnes signed the new law at a synagogue

scarred by swastika-painting vandals.

[Greg pointed out the footnote, thanks Greg!]

I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said "the pen is mightier than the

sword."

An Incredible Speech For Hate Crimes Legislation from a Conservative White

Republican from Rural Georgia. Georgia Representative Dan Ponder made

this speech from the well of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Remarks on SB390 - Hate Crimes Legislation

by Representative Dan Ponder

Thursday, March 16, 2000

Thank you Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen of the House. I am probably

the last person, the most unlikely person that you would expect to be

speaking from the well about Hate Crime Legislation. And I am going to talk

about it a little differently from a lot of the conversations that have gone

on

thus far. I want to talk about it a little more personally, about how I came

to

believe what I believe.

About two weeks ago my family got together for my father's 70th birthday. It

was the first time since my oldest daughter was born 19 years ago that only

the children and spouses got together, no grandchildren. We stayed up until

2 o'clock in the morning talking about hate crime legislation, this very

bill.

Even my family could not come to a resolution about this bill, but we did

agree that how you were raised and who we are would likely influence how

you would vote on this bill. So I want you to know a little bit about me, and

how I came to believe what I believe.

I am a White Republican, who lives in the very Southwest corner of the most

ultra-conservative part of this state. I grew up there. I have agricultural

roots. I

grew up hunting and fishing. I had guns when I was a kid. On my 12th

birthday I was given that thing that so many southern boys receive, that

shotgun from my dad that somehow marked me as a man. I was raised in a

conservative Baptist church. I went to a large, mostly white Southern

university. I lived in and was the President of the largest, totally white

fraternity on that campus. I had 9 separate Great-Great-Great Grandfathers

that fought for the Confederacy. I don't have a single ancestor on all of my

family lines that lived north of the Mason-Dixon line going back to the

Revolutionary War. And it is not something that I am terribly proud of, but

it

is just part of my heritage, that not one, but several of those lines

actually

owned slaves.

So you would guess just by listening to my background that I am going to

stand up here and talk against hate crime legislation. But you see, that's

the

problem when you start stereotyping people by who they are and where they

came from, because I totally, totally support this bill.

I come from a privileged background, but hate has no discrimination when it

picks its victims. I have a Catholic brother-in-law. My sister could not be

married in their church, and his priest refused to marry them because they

were of different faiths.

I have a Jewish brother-in-law. Thedifference in that religion has caused

part

of my family to be estranged from each other for over 25 years.

I was the President of the largest fraternity at Auburn University, which won

an award while I was there as the best Chapter in the country. Out of over

100 members, 6 of those are now openly gay. But the "lasting bond of

brotherhood" that we pledged ourselves to during those idealistic days

apparently doesn't apply if you should later come out and declare yourself

gay.

Some of you know that my family had an exchange student from Kosovo that

lived with us for six months, during the entire time of the fighting over

there.

When we last heard from her, her entire extended family of 26 members had

not been heard from. Not one of them. They had all been killed or

disappeared because of religious and ethnic differences that we cannot even

begin to understand.

My best friend in high school and college roommate's parents were raised in

Denmark during the war. His grandfather was killed serving in the

Resistance. For three years, that family survived because people left food on

their doorstep during the middle of the night. They couldn't afford to openly

give them food because they would then be killed themselves.

And to Representative McKinney, we are probably as different as two people

can be in this House based on our backgrounds. But I myself have also

known fear, because I am a white man that was mugged and robbed in

Chicago in a black neighborhood. And you are right. It is a terror that never

goes away. It doesn't end when the wounds heal or the dollars are replaced

in your wallet. It is something that you live with the rest of your life.

But I want to tell you the real reason that I am standing here today. And

this

is personal. In my five years in this House I have never abused my time in

the well, and I only have 2 days before I leave this body [the Georgia House

of Representatives], so I hope that you will just listen to this part for me.

There was one woman in my life that made a huge difference and her name

was Mary Ward. She began working for my family before I was born. She

was a young black woman whose own grandmother raised my mother.

Mary, or May-Mar as I called her, came every morning before I was awake to

cook breakfast, so it would be on the table. She cooked our lunch. She

washed our clothes. But she was much more than that. She read books to

me. When I was playing Little League she would go out and catch ball with

me. She was never, ever afraid to discipline me or spank me. She expected

the absolute best out of me, perhaps, and I am sure, even more than she did

her own children. She would even travel with my family when we would go to

our house in Florida during the summer, just as her own grandmother had

done.

One day, when I was about 12 or 13, I was leaving for school. As I was

walking out the door she turned to kiss me good-bye. And for some reason, I

turned my head. She stopped me and she looked into my eyes with a look

that absolutely burns in my memory right now and she said, "You didn't kiss

me because I am black." At that instant, I knew that she was right. I denied

it.

I made some lame excuse about it. But I was forced at that age to confront a

small dark part of myself. I don't even know where it came from. This lady,

who was devoting her whole life to me and my brother and sister, who loved

me unconditionally, who had changed my diapers and fed me, and who was

truly my second mother, that somehow she wasn't worthy of a good-bye kiss

simply because of the color of her skin.

Hate is all around us. It takes shape and form in ways that are somehow so

small that we don't even recognize them to begin with, until they somehow

become acceptable to us. It is up to us, as parents and leaders in our

communities, to take a stand and to say loudly and clearly that this is just

not acceptable. I have lived with the shame and memory of my betrayal of

Mary Ward's love for me. I pledged to myself then, and I re-pledged to myself

the day I buried her, that never, ever again would I look in the mirror and

know that I had kept silent, and let hate or prejudice or indifference

negatively

impact a person's life, even if I didn't know them.

Likewise, my wife and I promised to each other on the day that our oldest

daughter was born that we would raise our children to be tolerant. That we

would raise them to accept diversity and to celebrate it. In our home,

someone's difference would never be a reason for injustice. When we take a

stand, it can slowly make a difference.

When I was a child, my father's plants had a lot of whites and a lot of

blacks

working in them. We had separate water fountains. We had separate tables

that we ate at. Now my daughter is completing her first year at Agnes Scott

College. She informed me last week that she and her roommate, who

happens to be black, they were thrown together just randomly last year as

first-year students, had decided that they were going to room together again

next year. I asked her the reasons that they had decided to live together

again. She said, "Well, we just get along so well together." She mentioned a

couple of other reasons, but do you know what was absent?

Color.

She just didn't think about it.

You can make progress when you take a stand. Our exchange student, who

grew up in a country where your differences absolutely defined everything

about you, now lives in Dallas where a whole community of different races

has embraced her and is teaching her how to accept people who are

different from her and who love her.

To those that would say that this bill is creating a special class of

citizen, I

would say... Who would choose to be a class of citizen or who would choose

to be gay and risk the alienation of your own family and friends and

coworkers? Who would choose to be Jewish, so that they could endure the

kind of hatred over the years that led to the Holocaust and the near

extinction of the Jewish people on an entire continent? Who would choose to

be black simply so that their places of worship could be burned down or so

that they could spend all their days at the back of the line?

We are who we are because God alone chose to make us that way. The

burdens that we bear and the problems that we are trying to correct with this

legislation are the result of man's inhumanity to man. That is hardly trying

to

create a special class of people. To those that would say that we already

have laws to take care of these crimes, I would say watch the repeats of

yesterday's debate on the Lawmakers. We made passionate pleas on behalf

of animal rights. We talked with revulsion about cats being wired together

with barbed wire. Surely, surely, Matthew Sheppard's being beaten and hung

up on a barbed wire fence and left to die is no less revolting.

Surely our fellow man deserves no less than our pets. Hate crimes are

different. When I was a teenager, on more than one water tank, I painted

"Sr's of '72". Surely no one in here is going to tell me that the words that

are

painted on walls that say "Kill the Jews" or a swastika or "Fags must die or

"Move the Niggers" are somehow the same as "Sr's of '72". Even today,

those very words make us feel uncomfortable and they should. Surely we are

not going to equate a barroom brawl or a crime of passion with a group that

decides, with purpose, to get in a car and go beat up blacks or gays or Jews

without even knowing who they are. Hate crimes are about sending a

message. The cross that was burned in a black person's yard not so many

years ago was a message to black people. The gay person that is bashed

walking down the sidewalk in midtown is a message to gay people. And the

Jews that have endured thousands of years of persecution were all being

sent messages over and over again.

I would say to you that now is our turn to send a message. I am not a

lawyer, I don't know how difficult it would be to prosecute this or even

care. I

don't really care that anyone is ever prosecuted under this bill. But, I do

care

that we take this moment in time, in history, to say that we are going to

send a message. The pope is now sending a message of reconciliation to

Jews and people throughout this world. Some of those crimes occurred

2,000 years ago. My wife and I have sent a message to our children that we

are all God's children and that hate is unacceptable in our home. I believe

that we must send a message to people that are filled with hate in this

world,

that Georgia has no room for hatred within its borders. It is a message that

we can send to the people of this state, but it is also a message that you

have to send to yourself. I ask you to look withinyourself and do what you

think is right. I ask you to vote YES on this bill and NO to hate.

Hon. Dan E. Ponder, Jr.

October 8, 2000

Thank you for sending this Rainbo. It brought tears to my eyes.

Love to all

Harsha

Rainbolily [Rainbolily]

Sunday, October 08, 2000 9:43 AM