Facing hate with faith
Lisa Neff
When President Clinton released his hate-crimes initiatives in early April, he leaned on religious groups for support. Joining Clinton in the Roosevelt Room of the White House April 6, the Right Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese in Washington, D.C., spoke passionately for the president’s antibias program.
“While we watch what is unfolding in Kosovo with ever-increasing horror, we must not let those distant hate crimes distract us from the hate crimes here on our own soil,” Dixon said. She urged people to “act in the Christian tradition and support the president’s hate-crimes program.” Clinton then announced a private-public partnership to promote tolerance in middle schools and a directive requiring the tracking of hate crimes in public schools and on college campuses. Clinton said he and the bishop share a sensitivity to hate crimes because they grew up in the segregated South–Clinton in Arkansas, Dixon in Mississippi.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
