[Peace-discuss] Punishing thought-crimes

[C. G. Estabrook]

"It’s disgusting to see liberals rushing into the sentence-toughening business."

	The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

We’ve got the Hate Crimes Bill, aka the Matthew Shepard Act, aka the Local Law 
Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, before Congress and far advanced on its 
repellent journey towards the statute book. On Thursday the Senate Judiciary 
Committee held a hearing on the bill, which passed the House of Representatives 
by a 249-175 vote in April. If passed, President Obama is expected to sign it.

The Matthew Shepard Act is a ham-handed attempt to right injustice by 
establishing different legal treatment for some classes of crime victims. The 
proposed statute classifies as “hate crimes” attacks based on a victim’s actual 
or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, 
gender identity or disability. America is well on its way to making it illegal 
to say anything nasty about gays, Jews, blacks and women. “Hate speech,” far 
short of any direct incitement to violence, is on the edge of being 
criminalized, with the First Amendment gone the way of the dodo.

Now, there already is a 1960s federal statute on the books proscribing hate 
crimes based on race, color, religion or ethnic origin, but prosecutors could 
invoke this law only if the victim was engaged in a “federally protected 
activity” like going to school or praying in church. No more, if the Senate 
agrees with the House. Suppose two fellows in a bar see a man come in and, later 
in the evening, beat him up. He turns out to be gay. Armed with the Hate Crimes 
Prevention Act if it becomes law, local prosecutors will have an incentive to 
pile hate crime charges on top of simple assault and thereby garner federal 
funding that will be available under the statute. The suspects then face an 
“enhance-ment”—several more years behind bars—for committing a hate crime. Or 
they are acquitted, and the federal prosecutor promptly moves in. Double 
jeopardy will metastasize from its already swollen presence in the justice system.

The gay lobby has gone into overdrive for just such a hate crime law ever since 
Matthew Shepard got beaten to death in 1998 by two roofers on the outskirts of 
Laramie, Wyoming. It’s actually somewhat unclear whether the roofers, one of 
whom was high on meth at the time, murdered Shepard because they specifically 
hated gays. Anyway, the murder has put them behind bars for the rest of their 
lives using tough existing laws. But, starting with Shepard’s mother, Judy, the 
$100,000-plus head of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, gay and “human rights” 
groups have been fundraising on Shepard’s “gay martyrdom” ever since. The 
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is a big hate-crime-law proponent, with 
the American Friends Service Committee the only group in it to have turned 
against such laws.

The problem with the Hate Crimes Prevention Act is that it creates a thought 
crime and also categories of crime victims for disparate treatment. Goodbye to 
equality under the law. How will a prosecutor prove that a lesbian was murdered 
because of her sexual orientation rather than because she refused to give the 
mugger her purse? Given the way case law evolves and the manner in which 
prosecutors advance their political careers, crimes against some types of 
victims will incur greater penalties, with this injustice spurring resentment.

Advocates for the hate crimes bill insist that it deals only with crimes of 
violence and has nothing to do with limiting free speech or thought. But as Paul 
Craig Roberts, has pointed out on this site. “All laws are expansively 
interpreted. For example: The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act 
(RICO) [passed in 1970] was directed at drug lords. Nothing in the law says 
anything about divorce; yet it soon was applied in divorce cases.”

Federal and state hate crime laws are unnecessary and dangerous. As always, the 
challenge is to apply existing laws in a manner that constitutes justice, no 
matter who the victim may be.

I’m glad to say the gay National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs “opposes 
legislation that calls for enhanced sentencing penalties for those convicted of 
hate crimes.” Five gay groups have publicly criticized a bill currently before 
the New York State Legislature -— the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act 
-- that provides sentencing enhancements for hate crimes. Let others join them. 
It’s disgusting to see liberals rushing into the sentence-toughening business.

http://www.counterpunch.org/