I am glad you've decided to read this. I hope you read the whole thing. Nothing is more frustrating than when someone disagrees with something they refuse to listen to. Have you watched the John Corvino videos on Upworthy? You should. This is because I can only aspire to deliver my arguments as well and calmly as he can. Also, the ends of his videos are funny. I'm having a hard time finding the whole playlist of videos so here is just one: John Corvino: Is homosexuality unnatural?
To the point. There are some debates that everyone knows are going on and that are so emotional we generally don't engage in "at the dinner table". (or at work, or wherever it is you need to maintain a polite conversation). Abortion, capital punishment, the 1%, marriage equality are a few of these topics. Most of America has an opinion on one or more of those topics and that opinion is very very important to them and is an opinion they arrived at with emotion, not just thought. We also tend to surround ourselves with the people that we have things in common with and because of that we spend a lot of time with people that share our opinions on the big issues. (for some reason I feel like, and this is just personal anecdotal evidence, that even surrounding ourselves with people that share our opinions the abortion thing is STILL split pretty 50/50, weird and possibly not true, like I said just based on my personal experience).
That being said, being around people with whom we share so many opinions it's really easy to start to assume "everyone" feels one way, except of course the crazies. It's easy to forget that completely dismissing the counterpoint is pretty desctructive to our mixing-bowl of a society. It's easy to forget that the counter point might not just be some crazy bigot but might actually be a person with thoughts and opinions just like you. This goes for liberals AND conservatives. I feel like a conservative person might be reading this and saying "yeah those liberals need to start seeing things from my perspective" or a liberal person saying the same about a conservative person. Nope, EVERYONE needs to see things from the opposite viewpoint, that's how we make progress. Why did this even come up? Why did I all of a sudden decide to stop and lecture you about walking a mile in a pair of Toms (or fancy black dress shoes, I don't know what shoes conservatives wear stereotypically...ideas welcome)?
Because October 11th was National Coming Out day and while I assume even pro-traditional marriage folks would be for that, I never stopped to ask, maybe they aren't. And because Oct 12th was the anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard and I found out that not everyone is for hate crimes laws, and at first I got mad, it took full day before I stopped and asked how that could be. Because Romney is leading in the polls, which means somebody is actually voting for him, there must be a reason, 50% of the country is not crazy lunatics. (also, 50% of the country is voting for Obama...not crazy lunatics). But I can't write about all of it in one post, so I'm going to focus...this is about hate crimes laws. This is why some people aren't for them (for the hippy kids) and why I think they are really really important (for the conservative people). By the way, remember the movie Cars? And the two cars? The Army car and the Hippy car? This reminds me of that, they were friends.
So hate crimes. I guess we should start by defining what a hate crime is, so we are all on the same page. Here is the definition straight from google, when I say "hate crime" assume this is what I mean: A crime motivated by racial, sexual, or other prejudice, typically one involving violence. Matthew Shepard isn't the only victim of a hate crime, and gay people aren't the only victims of hate crimes. Hate crimes aren't only committed by adults in alleys, they aren't only committed by people that have been hateful their whole lives. Much like with rape, hate crimes can and do happen everywhere, all the time, constantly. Bullying, while not a hate crime, is (for lack of better terminology) the gateway drug to a hate crime, which is why bullying is really really bad. The one thing I found we all agree on is that innocent people should not be getting killed, so that's good.
So why be against hate crimes laws? It's a fair question, and one that a lot of people are wondering. So I asked, with great trepidation, because I couldn't imagine a good answer to that question. So the first thing that I heard that really stuck out was the million dollar term "special treatment" I don't mean to take away from the argument by taking it down to two words, there is more to it if you keep reading. But we have all heard the phrase "special treatment" before in regards to a lot of things. In this case the question is, why should blacks/gays/women/other minorities receive special treatment when it comes to murder/abuse/assault? That is a fair question. Killers of straight, white, middle-aged men should also be put to justice, we shouldn't let them run free just because their victim wasn't a minority. The unfortunate truth is that we don't live in a perfect world. White men aren't often killed because they are white, or male.
If we lived in a perfect world we wouldn't need anti-discrimination laws. There would never have been affirmative action to fight about. The Lilly Ledbetter Act would never have needed to be passed. But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where if someone is black, they are probably stealing. If someone is gay (or seems like maybe they might be kinda gay) they are probably going to hit on you or turn you gay. We live in a world where people are afraid that the minorities will "take over" and become the majority and it's scary to think that you might end up being the minority. And in our world, when somebody kills a gay kid, they don't always have to go to prison for it. When somebody kills a black kid, they can cry self defense, because he was probably in a gang anyways. We live in a world where the "gay panic defense" is a real thing. I think the term "special treatment" has negative connotations. But, yes, minority groups need a little bit of extra protection to make sure that 1) they aren't killed because of who they are and 2) if violence is inflicted upon them, justice is done.
The other piece of the argument was that people get killed for all sorts of ridiculous things. There are people out there that are full of hate and will kill people because they are too short, or wear glasses, or drive to slow, or are wearing the wrong jeans. Should we add all those things to the list of hate crimes? No, probably not, but I mean if killing people with glasses becomes something that's happening A LOT then yes, we should. See, the hate crimes laws thing came about because too many people were getting killed for who they were, it didn't come out of thin air. It was not random. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Act is named after two people who were killed, Matt was gay and James was black, they were killed for those reasons. It's not called the "we think someone might get killed someday" law. It's not something that used to happen and doesn't happen anymore.
Lawrence King was murdered at age 15 by a classmate because he was gay in 2008 (might have been 2009). And remember the whole shenanigans over Trevon Martin? (that might be a bad example because I didn't follow the case and have no idea how it turned out). But the point is kids and adults are still today getting beaten, abused, bullied, and killed because of who they are. No, they don't deserve more rights to not be murdered than the white man in a suit, but they are more likely to get murdered than him, so they deserve more protection. Hate crimes laws won't stop hate crimes. It will put more people behind bars for doing it, it will build tolerance, and it will hopefully deter hateful people from being violent towards the groups of people they hate. (if you hate someone...just blog about it, don't kill them).
Listen, the point is it's first important that we understand that nobody WANTS people to get murdered. (if you do please seek help). But it's also important to recognize that minority groups do really get killed for being that minority. It is not something people say, it's not something that used to happen in 1998. I saw a picture on facebook of a man wearing a shirt that said "Romney 2012, put the white back in the white house" (vote for Romney if you want, but that shirt is racist and that shouldn't be the reason). Racism, homophobia, sexism these things are still out there. What's really interesting to me is that (again, anecdotally) people seem the least willing to protect gay people with hate crimes laws. If these laws were to protect just women and racial minorities would you be more supportive?
Watch this video.
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