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I Hate You

I hope that got your attention. Now don't go anywhere.

Big story in the news today is that John William King was sentenced to death for dragging a black man behind his pickup truck until the man was decapitated. His motive, aside from being a sick asshole who has the brains of a fetal tree frog, was that he thought killing a black person in an especially flagrant manner would be a great way to start a white supremacist movement. Instead it got him arrested, tried, and convicted in a pleasantly speedy manner.

The NAACP and quite a few other organizations have jumped on the event to pound the pulpit and demand for stronger and tougher hate-crime legislation. For those of you in the back of the class who just woke up, hate-crime laws add extra penalties onto illegal actions if the prosecution can prove that you hated the victim, whether because of his race, religion, sexual orientation, and probably a couple other things that I don't remember off the top of my head. Gay-rights groups did the same thing when Matthew Shepherd was killed out in Wyoming. Now, since I tend to have somewhat liberal views, I'm expected to stand up next to them and add my voice.

Well, I'm not. Because they're wrong.

Not because it's any way okay to kill, harass, maim, pester, or abuse someone because you don't like the color of their skin, who they have sex with, what color car they drive, who they think runs the universe, what operating system they use, or what soft drink they use. Because it's wrong to kill, harass, main, pester or abuse people. In general. That idiot on the other end of the McDonald's drive-through had it coming.

But I'm against all this hate-crime legislation that seems to have gotten so trendy lately because it makes what you think a crime. And if that isn't just wrong I'm not sure what is anymore. I feel that whoever came up with this little flawed gemstone had to have some sort of latent guilt of the sort the Roman Catholic church can bring on some people, where intent can be as much of a sin as the action. Freedom of speech and everything is still legal here, yes? Well, I'm sorry, Bucky, but that means that people are still allowed to say things that sound so offensive to you that you think your tender ears are going shrivel up and fall off from the shock. And that doesn't even come close to covering the things they can think about in the privacy of their own head. Deal with it.

If some idiot takes a lead pipe and whacks some guy over the head with it because he doesn't like the guy's hat, and some idiot takes a lead pipe and whacks someone over the head with it because he doesn't like black people, the two crimes are equivalent. Equal. Take both idiots and lock them up. Case fucking closed. It's hard for some people to understand, but one action is not a priori worse than another. They're both actions of people who have decided that the rules the rest of society plays by are not for them, and who need to be put away for a bit until they agree to play nice again.

What needs to be done is for hate crimes (if you want to keep the buzzword) to be vigorously prosecuted, and those who commit them have to be jailed or whatever a suitable punishment is for the crime using the existing laws we've got. Why do people keep thinking that more laws are going to make things better? Hey, guys! We've got all the damn laws we need! We just need to use them!

At least, that's what I think. You disagree? There's a mail link at the top of the page. Use it.