YES

By Kaitlin Rothridge

Hate crimes are unique among offenses specifically because of their motivation, a motivation that is essentially intolerance taken to its greatest extreme. These laws address that intolerance, which runs contrary to those principles on which our country was founded.
Most crimes – take assault as an example - are rooted in motives that transcend lines between religion, race, or sexual preference. A mugger would attack anyone who might be carrying items of value; a gang member walking through what he perceives as his territory might confront or attack people from other neighborhoods who don’t belong there.

Hate crimes are entirely different. Unlike the crimes that transcend the lines between race or lifestyle differences, hate crimes are actually motivated by those differences. Our nation was founded on the idea that we are all created equal; hate crimes are assaults on this idea as much as they are assaults on their victims. It is for that reason that hate crimes need to be defined in our laws, and for that reason that they should carry harsher sentences when committed than crimes with more universal motivations.

It is not my intention to minimize the pain felt by victims of crimes not motivated by hate; they aren’t "second-class victims." I advocate harsher penalties mandated for hate crimes for two reasons: first, since most of these crimes are premeditated, having harsher penalties will act as a deterrent for those planning the crimes, and second, if it wasn’t for the perpetrators' hatred, these crimes wouldn’t happen at all.

NO

By Celene Miller

Hate crime laws are unconstitutional, and need to be modified or repealed.

There is an equal protection clause in our Constitution that states that our nation’s laws must be applied equally and fairly to all citizens. Our discrimination laws are fine examples, as they define only generic conditions on which people cannot discriminate, such as age, gender, race, or religion. The specifics of those conditions do not matter; people from any religion, for instance, have legal recourse against people who discriminate against them due to their religious practices.

Hate crime legislation differs from discrimination laws in a very significant way:
instead of stating generic conditions for hate crime victims, these laws name specific groups who are protected by those laws. For example, consider an attack motivated by an assailant’s attitude toward homosexuality. Rather than defining that crime in a way similar to discrimination laws, such as “motivated exclusively by a victim’s sexual preference,” these laws identify homosexuals as a protected group. Due to the wording of these laws, a hate crime cannot be committed against a heterosexual, even if a heterosexual person is attacked on the basis of sexual preference. While recognizing that nearly all hate attacks motivated by sexual preference are committed against homosexuals, in the event that a heterosexual is attacked in that manner, he or she won’t be protected by these laws.

Specifically naming a protected group invariably identifies an unprotected one, which violates the equal protection clause.

So why would our lawmakers, with well-drafted discrimination laws before them as examples, decide to name specific groups? I can think of a one-word answer: votes.

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