Hate Crime Legislation - An Affront To Common Sense

When hate crimes legislation first appeared on the horizon I was outraged. But I was overcome with apathy in those days and said nothing.

As this class of legislation has come up from time to time, my outrage has grown until it has finally trampled all over my apathy. Now legislation is pending to add transgender persons as a protected class.

My anger at this point has nothing to do with transgender persons, gays, persons of color or jews. A violent crime against any of them is reprehensible and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

But … are any members of any of those groups more important to our society (simply because they belong to one of those groups) than I am? Or more important than my wife or my children or my grandchild? I certainly don’t think so.

If someone kills a gay person because they are gay, and someone else kills my child because she is in the wrong place at the wrong time, they are equally dead. I, and those that love the murdered gay person, would equally grieve over our lost loved ones. It is an insult to my child and to all who love her to assume that somehow more outrage should be expressed by our society – through our judicial system – over the death of one than the other.

The fact is, the ultimate purpose of hate crime legislation is not to punish one who perpetrates a violent crime against a member of a protected class more severely than one who perpetrates a violent crime against one who is not a member of a protected class. No, the ultimate purpose is to control speech. Free speech is in the crosshairs, and I fear it has already suffered a wound that will prove fatal in time.

The time will come (WILL, not MAY) when there are legal penalties for even being critical of either a protected group or a member of a protected group. Why? Because hate crime legislation is actually directed at thought more than action. If that were not the case existing laws, equally enforced regardless of the victim, would be sufficient. Hate crime laws address the thought behind the crime, and if we are punishing the thought behind the action we have begun the process of defining what is legal speech and what is illegal speech.

Regardless of where you stand on this issue, the day is soon coming when you will grieve over the day we started down the path of legislating Hate Crimes.