The House voted to approve a new ‘hate crimes’ law named after Matthew Shepard. The bill has been introduced in the Senate but a vote is not yet scheduled. President Obama said he would sign the bill if it makes it to his desk. The law would broaden current laws to include attacks based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity or mental or physical disability.

Modern day censors claim they are only protecting people, but this untrue. They are creating different protected classes of citizens, which means some people will have more rights than others. This will only generate resentment and further fracture the country into opposing groups.

Hate, like love, is an emotion, not a crime. Crimes are generally behavior-based not thought-based.

Hate Crime laws are unnecessary, and do nothing to increase the punishment for violent crime. David Kopel of the Independence Institute writes, “Hate Crime laws are not needed to punish people who commit heinous crimes. For example, Wyoming has no “hate crimes” law, but the killers of Matthew Shepherd were sentenced to life in prison without parole, and would have sentenced to death, but for the request of Shepherd’s parents. Likewise, when James Byrd was dragged to his death by three men in Texas, the Texas criminal justice system reacted with its characteristic severity; two of the killers are on death row, and the third was sentenced to life imprisonment. A hate crimes law in Texas could not have increased their punishment by one iota, nor could it have deterred their acts any more than the existence of the death penalty did.”

What if someone attacked a neo-Nazi solely because of that person’s beliefs, should the attacker be charged with a hate crime? If you say no, then you are advocating the government determining what kinds of hate are acceptable in society. No matter how despicable a person’s beliefs may be, we have to allow it in a free society. If the First Amendment does not protect hate speech, then by implication the government would have to decide what constitutes hatred and what does not. The legal system would expand the purpose of the law from punishing criminal acts, to punishing socially unacceptable ideas as well.

Additionally, if committing a crime based on socially unacceptable beliefs warrant greater punishment, then does committing a crime based on ‘politically correct’ beliefs warrant a lesser punishment? In that case, the judicial process would be incorporating ideology, rather than focusing on the specific crime against the victim. This would make a mockery of a legal system that is supposed to treat all people equal under law - a violation of the 14^th Amendment. Paul Greenberg correctly asks, “There’s a reason Justice is depicted as wearing a blindfold. Why rip it off? Why not have the punishment fit the crime instead of the prejudices behind it?”

Jazz Shaw summarizes well the 14^th Amendment violation by saying, “When you pass laws which assign greater guilt to certain parties for committing the same crimes, based on nothing more than what they were thinking at the time and the ‘class’ of citizens who were the victims, then you are providing unequal protection of the laws. You are assigning a higher value to the lives, liberty and property of some victims than others based on their sexual orientation, their race, skin color, religion, etc.”

The real motivation behind Hate Crime laws is the banning of ideas the political left finds offensive. Eventually the federal government will be pushed by liberal groups to include religious or political beliefs on the list of reasons for ‘hate’. It has already been included at the University of San Francisco. Their definition of a “hate incident” includes acting “either in whole or part by bias to their ethnicity, race, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or political or religious belief [emphasis added].” But unlike a person’s race, over which they have no control, a person’s political or religious beliefs are a matter of personal choice. That choice reflects their value system, and those values could be subjected to punishment if not approved by the state. The government would be deciding which values are allowed and which are not.

Several years ago there was a ruling in Canada we may see in America some day, as the natural progression of hate crime laws. Canadian Pastor Stephen Boissoin wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper expressing views that were taken as offensive by a homosexual. This homosexual then complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The Alberta HRC is effectively the ‘thought police’ arm of the Canadian government, and found in favor of the offended individual and fined Pastor Boissoin $7,000. The Alberta HRC also placed a gag-order on the pastor, which does not allow him to publish any further articles that mention biblical beliefs about homosexuality.

You don’t believe that could happen in America? We already have liberal Supreme Court Justices that openly admit that the High Court should look to foreign rulings for guidance. And if the government can apply greater punishment for certain thoughts that accompany criminal acts, what’s to stop the government from eventually punishing people for just their thoughts, as in Canada and other nations?

The Left, despite it’s clever and deceptive veneer, has always been about tyranny. They may view themselves as champions of free speech and tolerance (a popular myth), but even a casual examination shows the opposite to be true. Leftwing special interest groups will cry ‘hate’ speech at any critics in an effort to silence and punish them. Ultimately, the end result is that the government determines what beliefs people can have and express. So-called Hate Crimes laws are unnecessary, unconstitutional, and un-American.