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New 'hate crimes' law is a mistake
- Nov 3, 2009 at 8:54 AM
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New hate crimes law is a mistake
By Star Parker
Sen. Harry Reid, our brave Democratic majority leader, slipped the hate crimes bill into the defense authorization bill to avoid having to have our senators consider the controversial hate crimes bill on its own.
It's for good reason that our Democratic legislators wanted to hide under a rock while passing this terrible piece of legislation. It may help them with the far left wing of their party. But weakening and damaging our country is not something to be proud of. And that is exactly what this new hate crime law does.
The bill adds extra penalties to violent crimes when they are deemed motivated by gender, sexual orientation, or disabilities. It's the first major expansion of hate crimes legislation originally passed in 1968, targeted then to crimes aimed at race, color, religion, and national origin.
After signing this new law, Obama celebrated it by saying that in this nation we should "embrace our differences."
But law isn't about embracing our differences. It is about providing equal and non-arbitrary protection to all citizens.
Equal protection for every individual American under the law is what the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, passed after the Civil War, guarantees. That this nation takes this guarantee seriously -- that there are no classes of individuals treated differently under the law -- has been a justifiable obsession of blacks.
A society in which all life is not valued the same, where murder of one citizen is not the same as the murder of another citizen, is a horror that black Americans have known too well.
So it is a particular irony that this major expansion of the politicization of our law has been signed by our first black president.
What could it possibly mean that the penalty for the same act of violence -- for murder -- may be different depending on what might be deemed to be the motivation?
Can you imagine a football game where the penalty for roughing the passer is 20 yards rather than 15 yards if the referee concludes that the violence perpetrated was motivated because the quarterback was homosexual?
Is it not a sign of our own pathology that we now have codified that it is worse to murder a homosexual than someone who has committed adultery, even with your husband or wife, or who has slandered or robbed? Isn't the point murder?
Can we really believe that someone capable of murder is less likely to do so if the victim is a homosexual and the penalties are greater?
It should be clear that hate crime law has nothing to do with improving our law but rather with creating favored political classes. It is something that should be hateful to everyone who cares about a free society, and particularly hateful to those, such as blacks, who have been victimized by politicization of law.
How about the sad and pathetic recent murder of a 16-year-old Christian black honor student in Chicago by four teenage thugs, also black?
A hate crime?
Black on black homicides are tearing up our inner cities. Hate crimes?
The social breakdown that produces the disproportionate violence in black America is the product of the same moral relativism and politicization of law that has produced hate crime bills.
We already have a source, which instructs against murder and to love your neighbor as yourself.
But this has been banned from our schools and our public spaces.
So once again, in what is becoming our Godless nation, we mistake the disease for the cure.
Tags: hate crimes bill, obama, legislation, law, jurisprudence, equality, poor judgement, black crime, white crime, gender based crime, homicide, fairness, justice, star parker, violent crimes, sexual orientation, homosexuality, heterosexuality, murder
Comments:
i say up the penalties for all of them.
we need to crack down on the crime regardless of who commits it or way.
his heart was in the right place but they didn't think it though to well.
Black on black crime in "inner cities" would not be hate crimes because they are not based on race. This is not a "hurt a black or gay person and get worse punishment" bill. This is about the kids who beat up a teenager just because he's gay with no other motivation. Just because he is gay. Or a black guy in a predominately white neighborhood getting pushed around just because of the color of his skin.
We know all too well that hate crimes are different from other crimes. They are more than mere acts of violence. They are more than individual murders, beatings, and assaults. They seek to terrorize entire groups of Americans. Hate crimes are nothing less than attacks on those values that are the pillars of our republic and the guarantors of our freedom. They erode our national well being. Those who commit these crimes do so fully intending to tear at the too-often frayed threads of diversity that bind us together and make us strong. They seek to divide and conquer. They seek to tear us apart from within, pitting American against American, fomenting violence and civil discord
Good article. I agree, crime is crime, regardless of the motivations. I understand that when people do things specifically based on gender/orientation/skin color/etc that their motivations are different than the guy who walked in on his wife and the mailman, but at the end of the day a dead body is a dead body. Said dead body was someone's something and they aren't missed any less because of why they were murdered. Furthering the distinction furthers the divide.
"we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal..."
I agree that crime is crime, but do you realize that all crimes are different in many ways as far as the judicial system is concern, depending on their circumstances and rules of evidence. No two crime in our system are the same, they are all treated iindividually based on evidence and how well it can be presented. Not to mention if you get a dud for an atty!
This is once again a weak attempt by the "righteous right" to undermine everything our president does. Black on black crimes in the inner city don't have anything to do with this, hate crimes are, and should be, a separate category that need to be addressed with penalties as severe as possible. I can't possibly define hate crimes any better than older has already done several comments back.
Seriously people, if we can all start working together, instead of trying anything to discredit our president, like some of the right wingers seem to be doing, maybe we can actually find a way to BETTER this country, instead of tearing it further apart. Because that's what's happening now, and I blame Glenn Beck and all the other right wing cronies, NOT our president. And it's sad.
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