Hate Crimes.YES Should there be special laws against them? In the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , for all its belief in equal rights, members of minority groups have often had to pay a terrible price just for being who they are. Its most compelling image has always been the black figure at the end of a lynch rope, hanging from a tree. But other groups-including homosexuals--have been victims of that murderous mur·der·ous adj. 1. Capable of, guilty of, or intending murder: a group of murderous thugs. 2. impulse too. Gradually, crimes motivated by hate have come to be seen as a category of their own. Forty states have passed hate-crime laws, but 19 of those do not cover sexual orientation sexual orientation n. The direction of one's sexual interest toward members of the same, opposite, or both sexes, especially a direction seen to be dictated by physiologic rather than sociologic forces. . Ten states, including Wyoming, have no hate-crime laws at all. There is no adequate federal standard of what constitutes a hate crime, and nothing could make plainer the need for one than the way young Matthew Shepard Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was fatally attacked near Laramie, on the night of October 6 – October 7, 1998 in what was widely reported by international news media as a savage died in Wyoming in October 1998. By all reports, Shepard was befriended in a bar by two young men, then driven away to a lonely spot, tied to a fence, bashed in the head with something heavy, and left in almost freezing weather for 18 hours until he was found. He died soon afterward. The men accused of killing Matthew Shepard are being tried for murder. But his death makes clear the need for hate-crime laws to protect those who survive and punish those who attack others, whether fatally or not, just because of who they are. --EDITORIAL The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times NO Why is hate for a group worse than hate for a person? In Laramie, Wyoming Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County in the U.S. state of Wyoming. According to the 2000 U.S. census, the city population was 27,204. Laramie, located in southeast Wyoming, on the Laramie River, is northwest of Cheyenne, at the junction of Interstate 80 and U. , where Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten to death, vicious murders are not unknown. In the previous 12 months, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found east of town with 17 stab wounds. In 1998, an 8-year-old Laramie girl was abducted abducted Distal angulation of an extremity away from the midline of the body in a transverse plane and away from a sagittal plane passing through the proximal aspect of the foot or part, or away from some other specified reference point , raped, and murdered, her young body left in a garbage dump. Neither of these killings was deemed a hate crime, and neither would be designated as such under any existing hate-crime law. But which crime was more filled with hate? Once you ask the question, you realize how difficult it is to answer. The supporters of laws against hate crimes argue that such crimes should be disproportionately punished because they victimize more than the victim. Such crimes, these advocates argue, spread fear, hatred, and panic among whole populations, and therefore merit more concern. But, of course, all crimes victimize more than the victim, and spread alarm in society. Violence can and should be stopped by the government. In a free society, hate can't and shouldn't be. The boundaries between hate and prejudice and between prejudice and opinion and between opinion and truth are so complicated and blurred that any attempt to construct legal and political fire walls is doomed. Indeed, our media's obsession with hate may even play into the hands of the evil, may breathe air into the smoldering smol·der also smoul·der intr.v. smol·dered, smol·der·ing, smol·ders 1. To burn with little smoke and no flame. 2. embers em·ber n. 1. A small, glowing piece of coal or wood, as in a dying fire. 2. embers The smoldering coal or ash of a dying fire. of their paranoid loathing. For all our rhetoric, hate will never be destroyed. Hate, as our predecessors knew better, can merely be overcome. --ANDREW SULLIVAN The New York Times Magazine |
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