'Hate Crimes' Fears Run High Before Senate Vote

pilgrim959 »

Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:17 am Agree: 1   Disagree: 0

Lady Justice is depicted in America as having her eyes blindfolded. This is done as an indication that justice is (or should be) meted out objectively, without fear, favor and prejudice without respect to identity, rank, power or privilege.
Hate crimes legislation is a perversion of that ideal and removes the blindfold allowing prejudice and unequal treatment to prevail under law. Justice perverted is Justice denied!
"Inalienable rights include freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of assembly,and the right to equal protection before the law." - U. S. Department of State
You may remember the widely publicized killing of 21 year old Matthew Shepard who was brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998, allegedly because he was gay. In the aftermath of the case, special Hate Crimes legislation ("the Matthew Shepard Act") was passed.
But there was another murder that you might have forgotten or not even heard about; the Jesse Dirkhising case. It happened about a year later. A 13 year old seventh grader by the name of Jesse Dirkhising was was drugged, raped, sodomized and after five hours torture finally suffocated to death by two homosexual men in an Arkansas apartment. The two predators confessed to using the boy as a sex toy while torturing him to death.

In both crimes the offenders were tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without special hate crimes legislation. So why is it that hate crimes legislation is necessary?
The only logical reason is to deem some people of more value, more worth, than others. It's a resurrection of the failed ideals under which slavery thrived. It creates a "privileged" class and an "under class" which goes against everything in the American ethic. Hate crimes legislation (for all it's good intentions) is purely a Pandora's box full of the creeping tyranny of authority sanctioned by law.