Haters of Hate Crime Laws

The discussion on Matthew Shepard a couple weeks inspired this post. Before talking about his story in class, I had never heard of Matthew Shepard and knew nothing of this story. Learning of the details in class, I was pretty horrified. I've heard about hate crimes in the media before, but none quite like this. This one was especially brutal and very hateful. 

Hearing this story sparked my interest in hate crime laws and wanting to know more about them. I did a bit of research online and found that there are a lot of people who are actually against hate crime laws and/or don't see the importance of them. One of the common opinions I found was that there are already laws against assault and murder, so we don't need laws against those same exact things motivated by hate.

I would disagree and say that we do need laws specifically against hate crimes. I found a quote from an article on the Huffington Post website, that sums up why I think we should have these laws: "The purpose of laws is to deter and punish antisocial behavior, behavior that violates the rights of citizens. Hate crime laws impose additional penalties for crimes motivated by hate, and therein lies the deterrence. I would venture to say that most haters who assault or murder people out of hatred for the group they belong to would not commit the crimes of assault or murder to steal a wallet...Their violent crime is not a means to an end -- getting your wallet -- but an end in and of itself -- namely, getting you. If they are deterred from acting out their hatred, they are unlikely ever to engage in a violent criminal act at all." 

Some people who say hate crime laws are unnecessary or redundant or actually go so far as to deny that there even is such a thing as a hate crime. Missouri State Rep. Paul Curtman, a Republican, is one of these people. Sometime last year he said, "There is not really such a thing as a hate crime. Crime is crime, right? Equality under the law." I think that that is an incredibly ridiculous and ignorant thing to say. There have been numerous of crimes committed purely out of hatred towards a person belonging to a certain group, whether it be gays, Muslims, women, poor people, etc. 

There are a whole lot of reasons that people give for opposing hate crime laws, but for many of these people, the real reason goes much deeper. It's usually pretty hard to get to real reasons, ultimate reasons, but in this case it's not. In this case it's clear. Unfortunately the real reason that some people oppose hate crime laws is that they themselves are part of the hate. 

I think that ultimately, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and recognize whether or not we have hatred towards someone/group because of their sexual orientation, race, gender, etc. and try to explore where that hatred stems from and work on those issues. Also, we need to realize that hate crimes are a real thing and no one deserves to be beaten, harassed, killed, bullied, etc. because of the type of person they are.