From Camille's latest Salon column, in which she answers letters from readers:
I am conservative politically, yet I see the profound weaknesses in the movement. One thing from the liberal side of thinking that I struggle with is the concept of a "hate crime." If I am murdered, is that less heinous than a member of a protected class being murdered?Matthew Shepard's case is often singled out as the reason we need hate crime legislation. The question is: What more would those who propose hate crime legislation like to be done to the perpetrators? They are serving consecutive life sentences. I believe they should be executed for their crime, but it seems that most liberals oppose the death penalty. So what would be different in his case if this legislation were enacted?
Steve Larson
Conejo Valley, Calif.I have been on the record since the 1990s as strongly opposing hate crimes legislation. I think it is a totalitarian intrusion into citizens' thought processes. Government functionaries should not be ceded the dangerous authority to make decisions about motivation. They aren't novelists, psychologists or sibyls! Furthermore, there should be no special privileged class of protected groups in a democracy. A crime is a crime -- period.
The barbaric acts that led to the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998 deserved a very severe penalty, which has been applied. Although I am a supporter of the death penalty in extreme cases, I think there were ambiguities here: The aimless hooligans who beat Shepard and tied him to a fence perhaps didn't necessarily mean to kill him. Despite my abhorrence of the crime, I was a dissenter about the sanctification of Shepard, a charming young man with a troubled family background who had faced many difficulties in life because of his frailty and lack of conventional masculinity.
Only a week before, Shepard had expressed fears about being killed. Given that apprehension, it is still inexplicable -- if the case is examined only through a political lens -- why Shepard would leave a public place in the company of such blatant thugs. A hate crimes law that claims to be able to penetrate the mind of the perpetrator should be equally open to questions about the victim. If, out of fairness or pity, one avenue of inquiry is shut down, then the other must be too.
She's absolutely right, of course. Read the column and catch her advice to Sarah Palin on how to deal with a hostile media establishment, and her musings on "the vexed question of lesbo porn, most of which I find hopelessly banal."
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And there is another aspect to hate crime laws also; in Rhode Island and Massachusetts (and probably many other states) assault on a person 60 years of age or older carries increased penalties. It would seem to me that these laws fall under the umbrella of what we are talking about. I would guess that Rod would oppose these stiffer penalties also? Or maybe not?
Do you really think that this sort of thing only happens to gays? It happens to all sorts of people, all the time.
Just go look at the FBI hate-crime statistics and think again.
Do you really think that this sort of thing only happens to gays? It happens to all sorts of people, all the time.
I rather doubt that all sorts of people all of the time have the gay panic defense used against them posthumously to justify their own murder in hopes that someone in the jury hates gay people and will think the killer was right.
Show me where all sorts of people all of the time have this problem.
Really.
Show me where a killer of some other group can get a slap on the wrist in Boston, like William Palmer
On November 20, 1995, William Palmer's lawyer called the police and told them that they would find a dead body in Mr. Palmer's bedroom in Watertown. The body was that of Chanelle Pickett, 23, a Boston-area transsexual woman. In the flurry of contradictory press reports, allegations and challenges that followed, Palmer never disputed the fact that Chanelle had died immediately following a struggle with Palmer in which he used his 60 pounds and 3 inch height advantage to brutally beat her. 18 months later, on Friday May 3, 1997, the jury in the Middlesex County Superior Court case against him found Palmer innocent of any murder charge, guilty only of simple assault and battery. The verdict sent a chill through Boston's transgender and larger queer communities.
Call her a tranny hooker and you do anything, including kill her. Tranny's have it coming, don't you know?
Rod's description of the "anti-Christian" "attack" in San Francisco after Prop 8 leaves out a few facts.
1) the group purposely walked into the Castro district in the middle of a rather large, on-going demonstration against the passage of Prop 8 three days after the election.
2) It was a Friday evening and they picked the part of the Castro where the most bars are.
3) The group does this every Friday evening. This was the only time they've been asked to leave.
4) They brought along an assistant along to video the whole thing. In other words, they expected trouble.
5) Many of the folks who "drove them out" walked between them and the few drunk people who were threatening them, acting as a human shield in case anyone lost his temper.
6) This "anti-Christian" "attack" occurred in a neighborhood with many churches, most of them gay-friendly. Within a few blocks of the intersection where the incident started are several houses of worship, all of them very well attended by both gay and straight worshipers.
BobN, none of your "facts" take away from the plain fact that a group of people engaged in legal free speech were driven out by an enraged mob. They had a right to be there. If a gay group wanted to protest the policies of conservative Christian churches outside of those churches, they'd have every right to be there, as long as they remained on public property. And I would be appalled if a Christian mob drove them out, and embarrassed as a Christian. It's a pity you don't have more respect for freedom of speech and assembly.
The plain fact is, you do not believe in protecting the speech rights of people you don't like, and you will do your best to rationalize your stance. It is instructive to get that learned. And now, I'm going to shut this thread down for the night, so it doesn't get out of control, as they tend to do.