Hate makes waste.

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS. THERE WERE FEWER major crimes in the United States during 1998 for the seventh consecutive year. A single major crime is, of course, one too many, but the continuing reduction in such crimes, as reported by the U.S. Department of Justice, is cause for happiness, if not satisfaction.

Several causes for this diminution come to mind. Our general, if unevenly distributed, economic prosperity probably accounts for fewer "money crimes"--armed robbery, burglary, auto theft--and might even account for a reduction in some crimes of domestic violence.

But all too often, news of a particularly horrific crime shatters any complacency we might have. Some of the latter are properly called hate crimes, because they arise not in the pursuit of money or in the throes of spasmodic fury that sometimes mark the worst of domestic violence, but because they are directed at a member or members of a particular group.

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old Wyoming college student, 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighing 105 pounds (his dimensions matter in this terrible story as does the fact that Matthew was gay). He had the misfortune to casually meet two men and a woman who kidnapped him, took him to an isolated rural spot where they savagely pistol-whipped him, and left him tied to a fence in bitterly cold weather. There his almost lifeless body remained for several hours until a passerby, almost mistaking him for a scarecrow, reported the crime to authorities, but too late to save Matthew's life.

This horrible assault was, astonishingly, first reported as a robbery, but the overwhelming public reaction to it forced a recognition that hatred of Matthew's sexual orientation was the cause of the brutality that led to his death.

Other recent hate crimes have been just as shocking. Blacks in the United States are anything but strangers to violence that targets that artificial category called "race." Their skin color, varying from black black to a cafe-au-lait shade, almost indistinguishable from what we quixotically call "white," has made all too many of them victims of haters. Public lynching, once so common to our shame in the United States, has all but disappeared, but the vitriol that brought enjoyment to lynchers sadly still exists.

To wit, the hideous fate of a Texas man accosted by several Ku Klux Klan wannabes, tied to the back of a car, and dragged over roads, mangling his body beyond repair. The animals (with apologies to the innocent species) who perpetrated that crime were apprehended and are, at this writing, on trial, as are the contemptible killers of Matthew Shepard.

Doesn't the fact of such crimes necessitate a serious examination of the kind of society we have become? Obviously, all but a few of us would never, in a lifetime, be party to the unconscionable crimes just described. But is it possible that all of us, not individually but as a group, might bear some responsibility for the hatred of others "not like us"?

On the simplest level, do we ever enjoy jokes that feature racial- or sexual-orientation stereotypes? More seriously, do we express or even think opinions that derogate people of groups most often targeted for discrimination in our society? Even if we are by-standers who sincerely deplore singling out blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and gays for discrimination of any kind, can't we do better?

Could hate crimes become fertile ground for family discussion, perhaps not, given their savagery, at the dinner table, but as a kind of open forum in which all opinions are at least aired?

Catechetical instruction for Catholics and others lays down the law for the subject under discussion here by stating that we must not only love God, but we must also love our neighbor as ourselves. Unquestionably in that law, "neighbor" is all-inclusive. But despite the fact that we have heard that truth repeatedly in our lives, we often find it easy to make exceptions to that inclusiveness. Neighbors become only people we like.

Unfortunately, being told that we must love our neighbors as ourselves is not always enough. So we must open the windows of our minds, preferably in communication with others. We don't have to don designer sackcloth-and-ashes. That, in fact, is a bad place to start. Better we should start by assuming we are right in our prejudices and ask others in our discussions, "What's wrong with that?" Not that an anarchic round-the-mulberry-bush argument, possibly a shouting match, will automatically lead us to virtue, but it might just break the ice.

Everyone these days seems to be pointing to the new millennium, so why not resolve to parse the word neighbor practically with our family, friends, and even just hangers-on, and do our bit to make this a happier and more peaceful place to live.