Utah's "hate crimes" lobby tries again

Fighting the good fight

[Reprinted from Issues & Views February 14, 2005]

The good news is that another "hate crimes" law bit the dust and died. The bad news is that this was the 10th attempt to pass it in the Utah Senate, which means that its proponents are never going to quit. We have covered this topic a lot on this site (see "Increasing 'Hate Crime' Punishment Violates American Principles," "Law as thought control," and "Five more years for your thoughts"), and it's painful to see more laws cropping up in municipalities and states.

Can we say it one more time? It is outrageous, un-American and unconstitutional to set up laws proclaiming that the sensibilities of certain groups count more than those of others -- that greater legal punishment should be meted out to someone who harms another, if the perpetrator is deemed to harbor negative thoughts about gender or particular races.

Has not the man who strangles a three-year-old child engaged in a hateful crime? Does his crime become more heinous depending on the child he selected to kill -- a redhead child, or a chubby child, or a black child? If his decision was based on dislike of one of these categories, would his hatred of redheads be less heinous than hatred of blacks? If so, why? If a crime is committed out of jealousy, why is jealousy-hate less reprehensible than race-hate or gender-hate?

Utah has had a "bias" law of sorts on the books since 1996, but it fails to define the specific categories of "protected" groups -- i.e., blacks, Jews, homosexuals. The homosexual lobby is a primary promoter of the new bill, as activists campaign to add "gay" to the protected categories. Although they insist that desire for inclusion is motivated by concern for the physical safety of homosexuals, many in Utah believe it has more to do with a desire for greater political and social clout, in order to achieve such goals as intruding a "gay tolerance" curriculum into the Utah school system.

Persistent pressure from racial minorities and homosexuals probably will result in the inevitable passage of a "hate crimes" law, but in the meantime the Utah Senate is to be congratulated for putting up a valiant fight.

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