Just Say "No" To Hate Crime Legislation

Looks like we’re in for another veto and House and Senate battle over recent hate crime legislation. I offer a few thoughts here, confessing that I am finding it hard to find the actual wording of the current bills. So I speak of hate crime laws more generally.

I ain’t for ‘em. That is because I am a Christian, or a conservative, and I am hateful, right? Wrong. I hate hate, as a matter of fact. I think hatred towards other human beings made in the image of God is morally wrong. I think it is reprehensible. And I think such hatred is the legal right of every person who lives under the protection of our constitution.

I find hate crime laws to be wrong headed on the face of it, unfairly applied, legally confusing, and an affront eventually to a precious right of free and open speech.

As to the wrong headedness I just flat out disagree that a crime is made worse because of how the criminal thought or felt about the victim. It is important to get into the heads of criminals to establish motive. Hate may be a motive which helps establish a case and which helps lead to conviction. But you know, as regards serious crimes like murder something like hatred is almost always involved. Whether that hatred is produced by racism, sexism, envy, jealousy, or embarrassment is really not relevant except to establish motive, and thus reach a conviction. Is a murder victim more or less dead whether the source of hatred was racism or envy? Is a criminal more or less dead when they get the needle because they killed out of hatred? Is it more wrong for a group of red necks to kill a gay guy than it is for a group of gang members to kill a member of another gang? Is it more wrong to kill a person because he is black than it is to kill a person because he got a promotion and you didn’t? Is it more wrong to kill a person because he is handicapped than it is to kill a person because he stole your girl friend? I don’t think so. Is the murderer more guilty of murder because he murdered out of hatred? No. I see hate crime laws, especially on the federal level, as a way of succumbing to the pressure of special interests to be treated as an especially protected and hence a favored sub group of the population. I think hate crime laws are about power. Grabbing it that is. Using it that is. Frankly I think they are, well, hateful. I say that due to the vehement angry speech of the proponents of hate crime legislation.

And let me ask you, do we want a world where people kill others not out of hate? I mean, what is worse, a person with no reason for killing, no conscience, no feelings, who just goes around killing, or a person who kills out of hate? “Shit,” some guy says, “I just like killing people.” What hate crime is that lunatic guilty of?

There is no way to apply hate crimes fairly unless we make a protected special minority out of everybody. Shall we make the rich into a specially protected group because they are killed for being rich? Shall we make child molesters into a specially protected group because they are killed out for being child molesters? Shall we make the promoted into a specially protected group because they are killed out of envy? Do we protect the Bloods because they tend to be killed by the Crips and vice versa? I mean, by the time we protect all the possible kinds of people who get killed due to hate, we have just about protected everybody, and thus the legislation means nothing.

And what a mess we make of the actual criminal proceedings. Now we not only get into the head of people to discern motive, but to discern whether they hated uniquely a special group of specially protected people. How do we really do that? We do that by making broad generalizations based on prior speech. Or by reading diaries. Or maybe we develop a "hate detector test." Maybe we can invent a hate screening machine to use at airports. Maybe we anoint a very special group of psychoanalysts gifted in discerning hate to decide this for us? Shall they be appointed by the President? With advice and consent of the Senate?

And then, how do we really define hate? Can we really tell the difference between dislike and hate? Can we really tell the difference between hate for one person and hate for a group of persons? My goodness what a mess.

I remember one day in high school I was walking out of the auditorium. There was a guy, a black guy, that I didn't like and didn't get along with. I liked almost every other person in the school, white or black. So I was walking out of the auditorium and he shouts across the whole room, "Hey Gillespie, you don't like me because I'm black," And I shouted back, "No, David, I don't like you because you're a smart ass." That shut him up. But are we really so good at telling the difference?

Which gets me to the most chilling apart of this whole deal, the assault on free speech. I agree that there is a kind of speech that very purposefully and specifically incites to violence and I agree that such speech must be dealt with. However, hate crime legislation tends to morph into hate speech legislation. Because I oppose gay marriage I have been called hateful, my position has been vilified as a position rooted in hate. Well, I’m not and it isn’t. So, if I speak out against gay marriage, there will be a time when my speech will fall under hate crime laws, and my speech will be silenced, and I may go to jail. Look, if some moron wants to get up and call Christians Nazis, scumbags, morons, then let them. If some guy wants to stand up and call white people crackers" or "honkies" or "Klansmen" they are free to do that. If some moron wants to stand up and call gay people faggots then that is his right. He is an idiot, he is wrong, and the court of public opinion will side against him. If some skinhead brute wants to get up and call black people “niggers" then let his stupid self do that. He is only making a total bigoted moronic idiot out of himself. But if he calls people to "kill niggers," then we arrest him and lock him up for a very long time.

People everyday say the most terrible things about Christians such that if they said the same sort of things about these specially protected groups they would be vilified or put in the slammer or kicked out of school or given an “F” for hate speech. As far as I am concerned, if people want to call Christians morons, bigots, fools, blasphemers, or worse, that is their business. If they incite and encourage people to kill Christians then that becomes my business.

We already have statues against murder, rape, threats to violence, conspiracies to inflict harm, etc. Hate crime legislation adds nothing substantive to those laws. But it does create a chilling ripple effect as regards free speech. And for that reason mostly I oppose it.

Joel