Hate Crimes

This is a topic that has puzzled me since it's inception. As a brief history lesson, hate crime legislation came about after the murder of Matthew Shepard. Matthew was gay and was beaten so severely during a robbery that he later died. There was very conflicting testimony at his trial and during subsequent interviews about whether the murder was motivated by the fact that he was gay, but the legislature had already made up its mind that this crime was motivated by hatred for gay people. So, a bill by the name of the Matthew Shepard Act was proposed in 2007 which would make it a federal offense to commit a crime against a gay person if the crime was motivated by a bias against gay people. The bill was passed by both the house and the senate, but was ultimately vetoed by President Bush. Later, Senator Ted Kennedy attempted to attach the bill as an amendment to a federal defense appropriations bill in order to force President Bush to sign the law or veto necessary defense expenditures. And liberals wonder why people think the left hates the military!

I have a couple of problems with this proposed legislation. First, the Constitution expressly reserves and gives police power to the states. All people, including gay people, deserve equal protection under the law, and that constitutional right is made applicable to the states through the conduit of the 14th Amendment. Therefore, there is absolutely no need for a federal statute making this specific act a crime. That should be reserved to the states.

Secondly, the states have addressed this. Every state in the union has a law that makes it a crime to kill a person. Why are these normal murder laws not sufficient to cover "hate crimes"? Is the murder of a gay any worse than the murder of a heterosexual? If your best friend was murdered in cold blood, would you be more angry to find out it was because he/she was gay as opposed to just a botched robbery attempt? Would the end result not be the same?

The only thing this proposed law would do is give gay people more protection under the law than straight people get. It clearly treats gay people differently than others. But the biggest problem with the proposed legislation is how broadly it is worded. "Hate crime" has been defined so as to include verbal abuse or insults. That means, anytime a pastor gets in the pulpit and preaches on what the Bible says about homosexuality and someone gets offended, the pastor could be charged with a hate crime. That would clearly be a violation of the pastor's freedoms of speech and religion. This is already happening in other countries. Pastors in several countries have already been imprisoned and/or fined for preaching the Bible on this topic.

Even more scary is the fact that it's already happening in the US as well. 11 people were arrested and charged with "hate crimes" in 2004 in Philadelphia for witnessing at a gay pride event! Apparently the legal term for this is "harassment by communication." If that's not a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment, I don't know what is.

Clearly this legislation is intended to open the door to creating more and more rights for homosexuals. However, in the process, it limits the freedoms of others. The current state criminal codes are sufficient to protect homosexuals just as much as they protect heterosexuals and, therefore, "hate crime" legislation is superfluous at best and dangerous at worst.