Summer Issue 2007
1 Jul 2007
DEFINITION OF HATE CRIME
Hate crime is the violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. (United States Department of Justice)
HISTORY OF HATE CRIME LEGISLATION
America’s first federal hate crime law, 18 U.S.C. § 245 (b) (2), was passed by Congress in 1968 and enacted into law in 1969. It calls for the federal prosecution of all crimes committed on the basis of race, religion, or national origin against an individual involved in a federally protected activity, such as voting or going to school.
In 1979, the first state hate crime law was enacted by Massachusetts. Since then, forty-five states, as well as the District of Columbia, have enacted hate crime legislation. The exceptions are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming.
In April of 1988, a conference was held at New York’s Hofstra University entitled: “Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech: The Relationship Between Language and Violence." Joseph Ribakoff, a law student from Whittier College in California, was recognized at the conference as the winner of a national competition to write a “Anti-Hate” law. According to Ribakoff’s prize-winning “Group Libel Statute,” the time had come in America to not only outlaw crimes perpetrated against individuals on the basis of race, religion, or national origin, but also to outlaw all forms of verbal communication that either incited hatred against or caused "mental anguish” to minority groups, such as homosexuals.
HATE CRIME LEGISLATION IN AMERICA
On April 23, 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which requires the Attorney General of the United States to collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.”
In 1994, Congress passed the Hate Crime Sentencing Enhancement Act, which required the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for crimes in which the victim was selected “because of [their] actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation.” In May of 1995, the Sentencing Commission announced its implementation of a three-level sentencing guidelines increase for hate crimes. These severer sentences for crimes committed on the basis of perceived prejudice took effect on November 1, 1995.
Although championed by President Bill Clinton and passed by the United States Senate, the Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2000 failed to win approval in the House of Representatives. If it had been enacted into law, it would have added gays and lesbians to the list of federally protected minorities, as well as greatly increased the power of the federal government to investigate and prosecute all perceived hate crimes.
In May of this year, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 passed the House of Representatives. It is now pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and expected to soon be voted on by the entire Senate. If passed and signed into law by the President, who has vowed to veto it if it gets to his desk, this law will expand the definition of hate-crimes to include violence perpetrated against someone because of their perceived sexual orientation (homosexuals), gender identity (transvestites), or disability.
HATE CRIME STATISTICS
The following is the number of hate crimes reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the years 1995 through 2005:
1995 7,163
1996 7,649
1997 7,489
1998 7,462
1999 9,730
2000 8,063
2001 9,301
2002 7,775
2003 8,048
2004 8,759
2005 7,947
All told, hate crimes make up about seven one-hundredths of one percent of all crimes committed in America. Also, 60.5 percent of all hate crimes consist of vandalism (e.g. graffiti) or intimidation (e.g. verbal abuse).
ARGUMENTS FOR HATE CRIME LEGISLATION
1. Proponents of hate crime legislation argue that motive has always been a determining factor in the prosecution of criminals. Every good prosecutor knows that the accused must have motive, opportunity and means. Otherwise, there is little or no hope of conviction. Furthermore, a killer’s motive is determinative of whether he will be charged with murder, manslaughter or no crime at all. If he has deliberately killed someone with premeditation, he should be charged with murder. If he unintentionally killed someone during a fistfight, he should be charged with manslaughter. But if he accidentally shoots his best friend in a hunting accident, he is innocent of any crime and shouldn’t be charged at all.
2. Proponents of hate crime legislation also argue that crimes motivated by bias should be more severely punished because the injury suffered by the victim and society is always greater. For instance, while victims of hate crimes may recover their lost possessions or fully recover from their physical wounds, they may never recover their mental health, but end up emotionally scarred for life. In addition to this, civil society itself is threatened by hate crimes, since they not only target individuals, but those individuals’ particular groups in society; consequently, threatening society with retaliatory crimes perpetrated by those groups due to real or perceived discrimination against them. It is argued, therefore, that stiffer sentences for those convicted of hate crimes may prevent things like the Los Angeles’ riot that broke out in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST HATE CRIME LEGISLATION
1. While it is true that motive has always played an important part in our criminal justice system, hate crime legislation is not about whether or not someone should be charged with a crime, and if so, what crime they should be charged with. Instead, it is about whether two perpetrators of the same crime should be punished differently—the politically correct perpetrator less severely and the politically incorrect perpetrator more severely.
2. While it is possible that victims of hate crimes may suffer lifelong emotional damage, it is no less a possibility for victims of any crime. For instance, rape victims are no more or less likely to suffer emotional trauma because of the motive of their rapist. And while we’re on the subject of rape, will all rapes be prosecuted as hate crimes, since their victims are always chosen on the basis of gender?
3. To suggest that laws that more severely punish members of one group in society for crimes committed against members of another group in society will somehow protect society from retaliatory crimes is absurd on its face. Indeed, such discrimination enshrined in our laws will guarantee civic unrest, not guard us against it. How will laws that more severely punish white police officers for cruelly beating Rodney King and less severely punish black youths for cruelly beating Reginald Denny rid our nation of bias and hate?
4. As we’ve already shown, hate crimes make up a relatively insignificant number or crimes annually committed in our country. Furthermore, the vast majority of them amount to nothing more than gestures of indignation, such as property defacing graffiti. Therefore, such an unprecedented government intrusion into the thought lives of its citizens over so infinitesimal a problem is totally unjustified, not to mention an ill-omened foreshadowing of things to come.
5. Hate crime legislation is really nothing more than a smokescreen used by politicians to score political points and by special interest groups to sneak through their political agendas. For instance, politicians line up to shout out their hatred of hate in hopes of winning the votes of all perceived victims of discrimination, while gays and lesbians paint every crime committed against an homosexual as a hate crime. If you listened to the gay community, you’d come to believe that no crime would ever be perpetrated against them were it not for their “sexual orientation.” While pickpockets may target us for our wallets, they only pick on gays because they hate homosexuals.
6. Hate crimes will prove astronomically expensive to prosecute. They will necessitate that prosecutors widen every investigation so as to pry into the personal lives of every defendant in search of any unsavory thinking. Prosecutors will be required to leave no stone unturned in their relentless pursuit of a possible bias motive behind every perpetrated crime. Prosecutors will have to delve into: (1) What kind of books or magazines the defendant read (2) What Internet sites the defendant visited (3) What kind of home the defendant was brought up in (4) What kind of company the defendant kept (5) Whether or not any of the defendant’s friends or relatives belonged to a hate group (6) Whether or not the defendant was ever known to use a racial slur (7) Ad infinitum.
7. Not only will hate crimes prove astronomically expensive to prosecute, but they will also prove absolutely impossible to prosecute. Judges will have to become clairvoyant and juries will need to be made up of mind readers. Instead of a jury of our peers, we’ll need a jury of telepathists. Instead of a brilliant jurist like Antonin Scalia, we’ll need the Amazing Kreskin on the Bench.
8. Hate crime legislation is clearly unconstitutional. It is a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment—the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. It creates a “superior victim status” that will result in criminals targeting certain kinds of victims over others, so as to avoid stiffer sentences if caught. For instance, if gays, cross-dressers and the disabled are added to the list of federally protected groups under hate crime legislation, a mugger is much more likely to target your grandma than a man in a dress walking down the street with a limp, lest he face triple jeopardy from a judge and jury if caught. As a result, hate crime legislation makes society safer for a transvestite by making it more dangerous for your grandmother.
9. There is absolutely no need for hate crime legislation, since existing laws already allow for criminals to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Ironically, the two bellwether cases always proposed as proof of our nation’s need of hate crime legislation—the murder of James Byrd in Texas and of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming—actually prove the opposite, that hate crime laws are totally unnecessary. For instance, two of the three white murderers of James Byrd were sentenced to death, while the third received a life sentence. What difference would hate crime legislation have made in the sentencing of these three defendants? Could you have executed two of them twice and sentenced the third to two lifetimes behind bars? Likewise, Matthew Shepherd’s murderers, both of whom received life sentences without the possibility of parole, could not have possibly received a longer prison term than the rest of their lives.
10. The term “hate crime” is nothing more than a euphemism for “thought crime.”Hate crime legislation is therefore nothing less than the empowering of government to police the thoughts of its citizenry. Any citizen found thinking “wrong thoughts” will be in danger of being prosecuted, imprisoned and reprogrammed by the government. Since government cannot read our minds nor see into our hearts, it will be forced to determine our thoughts by our words and deeds. Consequently, law, which has always been rightfully used to govern people’s actions, will now be wrongfully used to control people’s beliefs and speech. This will effectively do away with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees us freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Henceforth, we will only be allowed to believe what the government approves and say what the government deems politically correct. Any failure on our part to conform to the “thought crime legislation” and speech codes of the New McCarthyism will result in our incarceration for reprogramming. Refusal on our part to be reprogrammed, will force Big Brother to permanently remove us from society in order to build a socialist utopia that has criminalized “hate” and coronated “love.”
CONCLUSION
Hate crime legislation may prove to be the handwriting on the wall for our nation (Daniel 5:1-31). It may usher in the biblically predicted end time scenario—a tyrannical one world government that prosecutes and persecutes Christians, while being in bed with a politically correct apostate church that equally despises all true followers of Jesus Christ.
Don Walton
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