Vulnerable Need Added Protection Punish Hate Crime Against Groups Deserves Harsh Penalty.

Fri., April 16, 1999

By Rebecca Nappi rebeccan@spokesman.com (509) 459-5496

The two men who beat Matthew Shepard senseless, then tied him to a fence to suffer, to die like an animal, did not know the young man. Did not know him as a child, a sensitive teen, a young man searching for himself and his place in the world.

They saw a category, a despicable category in their minds. He was “gay.” They hated those gays. And so they murdered a category.

The men who beat James Byrd Jr. and then dragged him behind their pickup like a sack of trash did not see a human being. They saw categories. They saw a black. They saw a retard. They hated that, hated those blacks, those retards. So, they murdered a man who fit two categories.

If evil walks around our planet in disguise, it walks as a hate crime. Walks in the actions of those who harass, assault, torture and murder others simply because they belong to a category of human being that they have learned to hate.

All assault and murder is terrible, of course. But those crimes committed against people simply because of where they fit in the patchwork of humanity seem particularly heinous. And they are. They deserve special attention and special punishment.

The 1999 Hate Crimes Prevention Act, now pending in Congress, would be one more tool in the toolbox that helps the United States not be a Kosovo. Not be a place where you can easily murder others because you have been brought up to hate “their kind.”

The U.S. government already has a hate crimes statute that makes it a federal offense to commit a crime against people because of their race or religion. This recent proposal adds women, gay men, lesbians and disabled people to that list. It’s a no-brainer to add them. The act would provide a safety net for vulnerable people in states without hate crime laws.

Some who argue against it say it’s one more “plot” to give homosexual people special status in our culture. If it is a plot, it’s a sound one. More than 1,000 gay and lesbian people were victims of hate crimes in 1996, the latest year for hate crime statistics.

Hate that runs rampant deteriorates the basic freedoms Americans believe in. The freedom to be different from your neighbor and not be killed for it. That’s all the act provides. It should be added to the legal arsenal against hate.

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