The way this law is written relies on a test of whether a "reasonable person" would consider the statement "abusive". If a police officer decides it is, then you're having a bad day even if a judge or jury later decides it is not. Regardless of one's position on hate speech laws in general, this hate speech law is at risk for subjective interpretation.
Religion is a named protected class in the legislation. There is no reason to believe it couldn't be applied to extreme or fundamentalist religions, and I chose a particularly contemptible example of it to illustrate a point.
Comments
Can a statement of fact even be considered hate speech?
Also "Christian fundamentalist" isn't a protected class. If anything they're the class many protected classes need protecting from.
The way this law is written relies on a test of whether a "reasonable person" would consider the statement "abusive". If a police officer decides it is, then you're having a bad day even if a judge or jury later decides it is not. Regardless of one's position on hate speech laws in general, this hate speech law is at risk for subjective interpretation.
Religion is a named protected class in the legislation. There is no reason to believe it couldn't be applied to extreme or fundamentalist religions, and I chose a particularly contemptible example of it to illustrate a point.