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October 8, 2007
Murder is
outlawed. Murder, since the death of Abel at the hands of Cain, has
been the ultimate offense against our brother. Listen! God
commands Cain. Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the
ground.
Cain murdered
Abel.
God passed judgment on the crime. Now you are under a curse and
driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your
brother’s blood.
It was murder. And
it was punished by God. He told Cain, When you work the ground, it
will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless
wanderer on the earth. But
Abel’s
murder wasn’t a hate crime. At least according to modern law, it
wasn’t a hate crime.
Cain told God,
My punishment is more than I can bear. But he can be grateful he
was only punished by God’s justice and not by modern American
justice. Today’s punishment would have been so much worse…had it been
a hate crime.
Hate crimes are
crimes more dastardly than mere crime. They are special crimes
defined by hate...that is, a certain kind of hate...depending on who
you hate.
In the
United States federal prosecution is possible for hate crimes
committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation
origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. To date, 45
states and the District of Columbia have statutes criminalizing
various types of hate crimes, and 31 states and the District of
Columbia have statutes creating a civil cause of action, in addition
to the criminal penalty, for similar acts.
But
that is not enough for some. As of October, 2007, congress is
considering legislation that would add gender, gender identity, sexual
orientation, and disability to the list.
With
all of this attention to the types of hate that might motivate crime,
one would think that we have covered the worst of deeds with our
modern legalese. One would think.
King David murdered
Uriah the Hittite? Hate? Not under the new improved hate crimes
law. His was the lesser, kinder kind of murder, killing a man to gain
access to his beautiful wife.
What if O.J.
Simpson actually confessed to the two brutal murders proved to be his
deed by blood and DNA? He would finally be imprisoned to pay for the
slaughter. But hate? Nope. These were the lesser, kinder kind of
murders, killing a wife who wanted her freedom and a man who made the
ultimate sacrifice to save her.
By definition,
until now, murder has always been considered a hate crime. But soon,
encoding into our law a special kind of crime defined as hate, we will
have by exclusion reduced all other crimes, including murders, to
something less than.
Creating one class
of victim that is hurt by hate, to the exclusion of other victims who
are merely annoyed by hate, we have fulfilled the Orwellian prophecy
that predicted the reduction of equality into something other than.
All animals are created equal…but some are more equal than others.
We have become too
sophisticated to see the obvious. By legally reserving our deepest
compassion for a limited set of victims, we have diminished our
ability to protect one another in a civilized world where hate is
called what it is regardless of who is hated.
Murder is final.
It is no less painful because the law says it is the lesser, kinder
murder.
The more we work to
define what kinds of hate are worse than others, the more we all need
to worry about being left behind in the group of people outside the
circle of protection. There are no degrees of good hate and kinder
murder. Hate is hate.
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April 17, 2006
Lower than the Dust
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for past editorials.
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