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April 25, 2007
'Hate' crime laws in action
Posted by: Chris
A New York City countroom this week offers a glimpse at how hate crime laws work in the real world, and how the name can be a bit of a misnomer. Contrary to the biggest headlines, they don't always involve crimes where the victim is sought out out of "hate" for his race, religion or sexual orientation. In the case of Michael Sandy, it was because three drunken losers thought a gay guy would be easy prey for robbery.
They told the police that they thought it would be easy to rob the gay man. It was not easy.
The gay man ran away when they punched him, they said on videotaped statements played yesterday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. He climbed over a guardrail along the Belt Parkway, stopped a lane of traffic, waved his cellphone as if to call for help, stumbled into the next lane and was hit by a car.
They said they dragged the gay man off the road and searched his pockets for money and drugs but his pockets were empty. They went home and drank beer and the gay man died in a hospital.
The three of them were charged with murder as a hate crime, a distinction that could affect their sentences if they are convicted. Prosecutors said they chose their victim because they thought gay men were weak and afraid.
As I outlined yesterday, hate crime laws often work the same way existing sentencing guidelines have for years: punishing crimes more severely if a victim is targeted for perceived weakness. That additional punishment isn't there because the bias itself is a crime, but because the impact to society of the crime is more serious if victims are selected based on this sort of perceived weakness.
Consistency is hard to come by on this issue, at least among hate crime opponents. Oftentimes the first to scream "First Amendment" when anti-gay hate crimes are under discussion, are also the first to yell support for legislation that punishes more severely any act of terror or threat of same.
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Comments
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One point to add to what Joseph has said: It's both inaccurate and telling to hear conservatives claim hate crime laws (and non-discrimination measures, for that matter) create "special rights" for gays. The fact is, hate crime laws (and bias statutes) create categories of protection that work both directions: "sexual orientation" covers anti-gay and anti-straight attacks.
It's telling because they know gay people don't (for the most part) go around bashing straight people. That in and of itself admits the bashing is happening in one general direction. Straight people don't need to be protected from us.
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I have been a strong critic of you in the past, Crain, but it is good that you are actually putting forth arguments FOR hate crime laws instead of against them, for once. Now if you could only realize is that transgendered inviduals face the same kind of perception that they are too weak to defend themselves (and are targeted thus), we could actually work together for something instead of being divided.
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Perhaps if you hadn't been such a "strong critic" of me, "Every queen," you would have noticed that I have always argued in favor of hate crime laws and never raised objections to inclusion of gender identity as a protected category.
I have only raised that issue with regard to workplace discrimination measures, and even then not because I oppose trans-inclusion but because I felt it seriously hampered the chance of getting such a bill passed.
Along those lines, check out the debate in Iowa:
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070425/NEWS/70425074/1001
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"The opposition to hate crime laws to protect gay people are basically two categories of people. Those straight people who are opposed to anything which helps gay people, and gay people who feel hate crime laws make it more difficult to pass other pro gay legislation."
You forgot the third type of opponent to hate crime laws -- gay people like me who believe that a crime is a crime, and that every assault, murder and other violent crime deserves equal punishment rather than punishments being lower for criminals who target a straight white guy rather than a gay white guy.
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Hi, Crain. It may have been the case that you have "argued in favor of hate crime laws and never raised objections to inclusion of gender identity as a protected category", and reviewing your past op-eds and the 'clarifications' that followed the objections from much of your readership afterwards, you have indeed convinced me that you weren't as hard-pressed *against* TG inclusion in the hate crimes bill as you were ENDA, but when you type paragraphs with content such as "When the House voted last week on the gay and trans-inclusive hate crime measure, the tally was 223 to 199. The 40-vote margin in 2000 had shrunk to a 24-vote margin this time around. That's fairly close to the 27-vote margin last year, but the number of "no" votes in only a year was up by 13. So Keisling might not be aware of "a single vote we lost," but the numbers don't lie." in reference to the hate crimes legislation, it doesn't help your case.
Nice to see you watering down your stance, at least.
And as you may now known, trans-inclusion didn't hamper the Iowa legislation, it was the "fear" (on the part of the loony right) that the non-discrimination bill would somehow facilitate marriage equality. The bill has now been passed, transgender inclusion and all!
The comments to this entry are closed.
Joseph Kowalski on Apr 25, 2007 9:47:55 PM:
The opposition to hate crime laws to protect gay people are basically two categories of people. Those straight people who are opposed to anything which helps gay people, and gay people who feel hate crime laws make it more difficult to pass other pro gay legislation.
There is no reason we cannot have hate crime protection along with our other rights.
We have assigned different punishments to crimes such as murder and arson and there has never been an outcry to punish all murder or arson crimes to the same degree.
And as I said before, perhaps the most important aspect of hate crime laws is that they open up an otherwise local crime to federal jurisdiction. This might not be that important to those gay people living in more liberal parts of the country but this is very important when local authorities allow their personal bias to effect the investigation and prosecution of crimes against gay people.