The real problem with hate crime legislation

[Dale Goble <gobled@uidaho.edu>]

is that it seldom reaches the purveyors of the hate.  Hate crimes
legislation cannot punish Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations for the
crimes of The Order even though he created the moral climate within which
its crime were possible.

Similarly, the Southern segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s such as
Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and , created the moral climate within
which arson and murder were seen as legitimate acts to protect the morally
upright against the outsiders.

The two young men in Laramie are also pawns who responded to a climate in
which gays are presented as attacking the family and thus as outside the
protection of God.  The Trent Lotts and the Pat Robertsons may now
self-righteously wring their hands, but they are the people that effective
hate crimes legislation would jail for they are the purveyors of the hate
that produces the crimes.


Dale Goble
Moscow