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Religious dispute not hate crime
(by Dave Lange - June 27, 2012)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Religious dispute not hate crime
We share the same last name, but we're not related. He is a man of the cloth, and I am a man of the press; thus we both speak our minds, his being a biblical calling, mine being a calling to the First Amendment.
On the matter of the Amish seven, the Rev. Dr. Werner Lange and editor David C. Lange are of like mind. Set them free on bond.
It hasn't always been so. During his 10 years as pastor of Auburn Community Church, the Rev. Dr. Lange and I sometimes agreed and sometimes did not. The same was true for members of his own church, which is the reason he left nearly a decade ago and which is why some of them on occasion have kindly requested that I discontinue associating him with them.
But I just did it again. It has indeed been nearly a decade since the Rev. Dr. Lange departed the Auburn church and left behind the various local issues which gained him notoriety on these community newspaper pages. But it is that past connection that brings his name back from time to time.
He recently inquired about the possibility of publishing a guest column about what he considers the unjustified imprisonment of seven Amish men without bail in connection with a series of disciplinary assaults against fellow Amish people in Jefferson, Carroll and Holmes counties, specifically the cutting of their beards and hair. I declined, based on the length of his submission and its tenuous local connection -- only the reverend's long-ago pastorship in Auburn.
A version of his guest column subsequently was printed in the Cleveland newspaper, giving it more applicable and expansive exposure. And the Rev. Dr. Lange has made some news himself in connection with the assault allegations, arrests, prolonged incarcerations and prosecution as hate crimes, which he called a "witch hunt," "gross abuse of power" and "pattern of persecution." He collected a petition asking that the Amish seven be released and that criminal charges be dropped against them and nine other defendants. His encounter with U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach on a downtown Cleveland street resulted in a visit to his home in Newton Falls by U.S. marshals, which he decried as intimidation.
Based on reports by law-enforcement authorities, Bishop Samuel Mullet, the presumed ringleader in the beard- and hair-cutting spree, is not a nice man. Stories about certain expectations demanded of his followers' wives are beyond what most Americans tolerate as religious freedom. Assault and kidnapping are punishable crimes.
But holding the Amish bishop in solitary confinement and six other accused men without bail for seven months, as the Rev. Dr. Lange pointed out, is beyond usual judicial conduct. Accused child rapists, murderers and thieving Cuyahoga County Democrats are treated better. The presumption that whisker whackers pose a flight risk is a cruel joke.
Equating this case with such incidents as dragging a black man to his death behind a vehicle or brutally beating a homosexual to a pulp trivializes genuine hate crimes.
If cutting a man's beard because of a religious disagreement is a hate crime, what kind of crime would it be to probe a woman's uterus because of a religious disagreement?
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