The inestimable Pam Spaulding reports on a 60-39 Senate vote, with several Republicans crossing over to the light, to make it illegal to beat up gay people because they are gay people.

Good a time as any to remind people of one the most sick and twisted right-wing disinformation campaigns of our time: that it’s all a conspiracy to put preachers in jail.

Listen to the recording from swindler James Dobson telling his followers about the “all-out assault on our religious freedoms,” the “first step to criminalize our right as Christians to believe that some behaviors are sinful…. pastors preaching from scripture on homosexuality could be threatened with persecution and prosecution. Under similar laws in Euorpe pastor Ake Green in Sweden was found guilty and sent to prison….”

Read the petition he’s pimping:

Dear Members of Congress,

As an American, I am outraged by attacks on my religious freedoms represented by legislation such as the Hate Crimes Act and ENDA. These bills will severely threaten my deeply held religious beliefs and my ability to share those beliefs.

Our founding documents guarantee the rights to freedom of speech, religion and association and these bills directly attack those rights. I call upon you to do all in your power to protect our constitutional freedoms by opposing these bills.

And, if you define “sharing deeply held religious beliefs,” and (as the petition’s introductory text helpfully adds) “faithfully preaching the Scripture about God’s plan for human sexuality” as, say, beating someone near to death and leaving them to rot, then Rev. Dobson is your guy.

Thankfully, the reverend has lost this round.