Bravo to Steve Chapman for his take on the absurdity of hate-crime laws. I cringe every time I hear a news anchor earnestly state, “Officials are still trying to determine whether to classify this as a `hate crime.’ ” Why does it matter? The existence of hate-crime laws does nothing to prevent crimes.
Mr. Chapman sagely points out the underlying error in these laws–the focus on thoughts and words that are protected by the 1st Amendment. Like it or not, it must not be illegal to be a bigot. What happened to Matthew Shepard and to the children in the L.A. day-care center were reprehensible acts. But I do not believe they were any more horrible because of the sexual orientation or religions of the victims. This is political correctness made very, very ugly–even more ugly because of their ethnic favoritism, which Mr. Chapman points out in the story about the three African-American kids taunting and beating the white kid (“Some hate crimes are more equal than others”).
I wish that more people in the media had the guts to point out the utter stupidity of this new trend.
