Why Hate-crime Laws are Wrong
by Selwyn Duke
Misguided passion often inspires people to do wrong, and sometimes that wrong is a violation
of a law ....and sometimes it's the creation of a law. This happens all the time, because laws are not a
reflection of divine justice, but only of man's conception of it. And this chasm that lies between
illegality and immorality is inhabited by what has been spreading like a virulent infection: what
have come to be known as "hate-crime" laws. They were born of an effort to achieve justice, but
are legislators' Rosemary's baby - they are an offense against justice.
Hate-crime laws are unjust for a few reasons, but foremost among them is that they seek to
punish people for having certain thoughts - they are an attempt at thought control. This is not
hard to understand if you dispassionately analyze what these laws actually dictate. Consider this
example: two identical illegal acts are committed; the perpetrator of the second is motivated by
hate, whereas the perpetrator of the first is motivated by good old greed. I'll call the latter Mr.
Greed and the former Mr. Hate. The punishment deemed appropriate for Mr. Greed is ten years
in prison, but the punishment levied against Mr. Hate is twenty years up the river because his
crime was motivated by his namesake. Now, let's analyze the reason for this disparity between
their sentences. Obviously, the law determined that the act itself warranted ten years in prison,
because that's what was received by Mr. Greed when ONLY the nature of the act was taken into
consideration. So, this begs the question, since the two men committed the same act, what were
the extra ten years imposed in Mr. Hate's case for? They could only have been for one thing: the
THOUGHTS that motivated the act, or were expressed through it. This is wrong; it strikes a
blow against what must be central to any free society: the freedom to think, feel, and express
yourself as you wish. It sets the government up as the arbiter of the acceptability of thoughts and
gives it the role of mind-reader, and this is very dangerous. It's often hard just ascertaining what
actually happened in a given case, never mind determining what thoughts were going through
the defendant's mind. We are not God, therefore we cannot read hearts; we should be punishing
actions, not discriminating between motivations. Hate-crime laws are patently un-American -
they are Orwellian.
The second problem with these laws is quite ironic, because while this society prides itself on
rooting out all forms of invidious discrimination, it has actually mandated it with this legislation.
Not only do hate-crime laws discriminate between defendants on the basis of the political-
correctness of their thoughts, but more egregiously, they discriminate against victims' families
as far as retribution goes. Think about it: if someone is killed due to hate, his murderer will most
likely get a lot more jail time than someone who kills one of your loved ones for what I guess
we'd have to call a "garden variety" reason. So, I have to ask you: if the killer of your parent,
child, sibling or spouse got a veritable slap on the wrist relative to one of these politically-
incorrect killers, how would you feel? Would you think it was fair? No, your loved one would be
just as dead and you'd want his killer to be punished just as harshly. And, one more point to
ponder: if someone else's loved one's murderer received a lesser punishment for this reason,
would you want to have to be the one to explain to him that it's justifiable because the
motivation for the killing was more "acceptable"?
There is a question that now arises: if hate-crime laws are so unjust, why are they so
universally regarded as being enlightened justice? The answer is that they feel right, and in an
age where feelings reign at the expense of reason, lies will prevail at the expense of justice. And
why does this lunacy feel right? It's because society has been convinced that racism is the end
all and be all, the source of all our problems - the bane of human existence. But it isn't. There
are seven deadly sins: sloth, gluttony, lust, envy, pride, greed and wrath, and racism is only a
permutation of the last one. It's not the root of all evil, it's only a small percentage of it; after all,
hate-crime constitutes only a minuscule percentage of all crime. If we want to focus attention on
the crimes that cause most of the problems, we should focus not on hate-crime but on greed
crime, because most all crime is just that. Which brings to mind a recollection of mine: I seem to
remember a highly regarded and widely published book which is invested with wisdom from a
higher authority, and it vindicates my assessment. It states that "The love of money is the root of
all evil".
Hatred is the issue here, but it isn't the hatred that resides in hearts of bigots who commit
crimes. After all, they're not so unusual - no one who commits a heinous act is motivated by love.
And prejudice is also the issue, but again, not the prejudice that resides in those darkened hearts.
No, the problem is the hatred and prejudice harbored by those who advocate hate-crime laws.
They hate those who are driven by motives they find unpalatable so much, that they self-
righteously seek to impose a discriminatory standard for judging crimes that is not justice, but
only a reflection of their own prejudice. Because of this their justice is not blind, they are simply
blind to justice. Justice dictates that those who commit heinous acts should be punished harshly
across the board - justice should be fair and equitable. Hate-crime laws make this impossible
and must be eliminated - they are wrong. They should offend the sensibilities of every freedom
loving American, because they are contrary to Truth, justice and the American way.
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