'Hate Laws' Real Agenda
By Harmony Grant 4-8-8
In the UK, 7000 citizens signed their name to a petition to expand
hate crime laws. They want the laws to punish anyone who commits
violence because someone looks different. The petition responds to
the murder of a young Goth-dressing woman and her boyfriend
in a park.
The assailants didn't know the girl. Presumably they attacked
her because she was wearing black lipstick. That's how the
argument goes. The thuggish kids who attacked her should get
tripled penalties because their violence was motivated by her
weird looks.
So, it would have been less heinous had she been an upper
class, pearls-wearing babe attacked because she looked rich?
What if she'd been a gorgeous blonde cheerleader and they
attacked her because they weren't getting any? The list goes
on forever.
It is hideously unjust to label the value of various victims,
stiffening penalties for some murders and not others, for some
assaults and not others, etc. Every violent crime is a tragedy
to be redressed. Endlessly add to the list of special "hate
crime" victims, and someday everybody will be on
it. Then we'll be right back where we started: equal law.
But unjust penalties for violent crimes aren't the greatest
danger of hate crime laws. Their greatest danger is that they
criminalize free speech. They criminalize certain beliefs and
animosities-emotions with which the government has no business
meddling. The government has no more right to say you can't
be biased against homosexuals than to say you can't be biased
against professional athletes or workaholics or overbearing
mothers-in-law.
Hate crime laws were created by the Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish organization committed to demonizing-and
yes, defaming-beliefs and values it opposes. Specifically, the ADL
opposes anti-Israel and anti-homosexual activism and Christian
evangelism. Hate crime laws were not created primarily to
respond to violent crime (which is, obviously, already illegal). They
were created to marginalize and then criminalize certain kinds of
speech and "bias" primarily Christian.
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