Dangers of Hate Crime Legislation

With hate crimes legislation moving to the full Indiana House, it is timely to look at the potential dangers of such a policy.  The potential abuse of such policies on individuals who disagree with homosexuality has been a problem in different places around the world.  Here is but one example from Wisconsin:

Additionally, hate crimes legislation promotes unequal justice under the law.  Under such a law, a criminal who assaults someone, simply because they hate their victim and feel pleasure in seeing him or her suffer, would be punished LESS severely then a criminal who assaults someone because of their sexual preference.

A more common sense approach to fighting crime would be to raise the penalties for the crime itself, across the board, not picking and choosing politically correct aggravating circumstances to reward certain groups and punish others.  However, it seems that some proponents of hate crimes legislation do not care about equal justice for all, just a select few.

Comments

[Bob G.]

Agreed, Ryan.

One of the most basic aspects to crime is the LAW.
We have laws ONLY for the LAW-LESS.

Yet, if these laws do not apply to EVERYONE, then NO ONE is safe, and they mean nothing.

B.G.