Dorsey is a first-year undeclared student.
By Lillian Dorsey
Hate crimes legislation serves an essential function that cannot
be met by the current set of laws at both the state and federal
level.
In his column on the Laramie project, Andy Jones makes it seem
as though leftists are advocating hate crime laws as part of a mass
conspiracy against America. He questions the necessity of having
hate crimes legislation because people who commit hate crimes are
already punished for the crime itself.
I agree in part that all hate crimes can be partly accounted for
by the current set of laws. But there is a difference in that hate
crime legislation can serve as a deterrent.
When you watch the news, the murders that usually get coverage
have something to do with broken-up couples with a resentful
partner that turned to murder. Or sometimes you hear about
robberies where gunmen kill people at a store or bank. In a loose
sense, both of these situations can be interpreted as having
involved hate. In the first scenario, someone kills a spouse they
once loved but now “hate,” and in the second, more
regard is given to money than to human life.
Both of these scenarios stretch the definition of
“hate” as we commonly understand it. Take another case:
Andrea Yates, who killed all of her children because of mental
illness. Can we really say she “hated” her children?
She certainly had her own reason for killing them, but we’ll
probably never know. Admittedly, hate crimes legislation would not
have stopped her or helped in any of the previous examples.
But when comparing all of these examples with the Matthew
Shepard case, an obvious difference appears. His case did not
involve revenge, money or mental illness. In Shepard’s case,
two men made a conscious effort to assault him for the singular
reason that Shepard was gay. They didn’t even know him, and
they had nothing to take away from him.
Enacting hate crimes legislation would help serve as a deterrent
to cases like these, not as a method of increasing punishment to
which Jones infers. Deterrents are usually perceived as ineffectual
““ the death penalty, for example, is often questioned as a
viable deterrent ““ but this case is different. If the two men
who assaulted Matthew knew they were going to get slapped with
stiff hate crimes charges along with all of their other charges,
they probably would have thought twice before they carried out
their act.
We don’t even have to go as far as murder. Even smaller
crimes like assault or battery would likely be deterred if the
assailant knew he or she could be prosecuted under federal hate
crimes laws in addition to the minor prosecution for assault coming
from local police.
I agree it’s idealistic to think hate crimes laws will
stop all hate crimes, but I do believe that they can stop some.
People have varying degrees of anger and willingness to commit
crimes. I admit there are those who cannot be deterred at all and
will commit a crime regardless of the consequences.
But there are also those who are on the borderline, who might
consider committing a crime because they know the punishment
won’t be harsh even if they are caught. Imposing hate crimes
laws will not stop the psychopaths, but it will likely stop these
borderline cases. Why should we oppose laws that might save some
lives?
You’re probably asking yourself what the difference
between hating homosexuals and any other group of people. What if
someone hated the police and shot the first officer they
encountered? Should that count as a hate crime, with the police as
the hated group?
This is not a hate crime in the same way the Shepard case is.
Matthew couldn’t choose to “stop” being gay in
order to make himself less vulnerable to hate crimes; he had to
live with that. Hate crimes legislation is meant to protect people
who cannot help but to be the object of someone’s hate
because of who they are. Police officers, on the other hand,
consciously make a decision to serve the community and know that
their lives may be at risk. Everyday citizens who cannot change
their race, sexual orientation, or religion, should not be
subjected to the same kind of danger.
Not all crimes are hate crimes. The type of hate that hate
crimes legislation forbids is different from the attitude of other
criminals. A mugging or beating does not compare with the senseless
violence exercised against Matthew Shepard, who couldn’t help
but be part of his community. We can’t prevent all crime, but
if we can prevent some by passing hate crimes laws, then we should.
I don’t understand the objection to saving lives.