< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Suppose you read that Newt Gingrich had proposed to increase the capital gains tax, with the proceeds going to welfare mothers, drug addicts and shelters for homeless Democrats.
That's about how I felt when I read that my state representative, a solid conservative Republican named Ken Chlouber, had introduced a bill which would classify assaults against homosexuals as a hate crime.
After all, the last time Chlouber pushed a law to protect any group of Coloradans, the protected group was big-game hunters.
So I was more than surprised when my state representative, one of the best friends the National Rifle Association has ever known in the halls of government, a man who campaigned on putting prayer back in schools and who attacked his last opponent, a bachelor, for being soft on family values, suddenly gets criticized by Colorado for Family Values -- for being too liberal.
That accusation also appeared in a letter published recently in Ken's hometown paper, the Leadville Herald-Democrat. The author of that letter claimed to have grown up in Leadville 30 years ago when it was a decent, moral place.
There must be two Leadvilles in Colorado. One Leadville boasted of its wickedness during the silver boom. There Prohibition was flouted as illicit distillers hastened to serve the Denver market for Leadville Blue (old-timers tell how kegs of moonshine were placed in the water tank of the tender behind narrow-gauge steam locomotives as the train pulled out of the Cloud City, bound for Breckenridge, South Park and Denver; just before Littleton, the train made a brief unscheduled stop to unload the kegs).
That Leadville had the Pioneer Club, which ran rather openly as a bordello through the 1960s. It operated a school system, perhaps alone in Colorado, where no teacher's contract ever suffered from a morals clause.
And then there is the Mayberry Leadville that some guy says he grew up in.
Given that Chlouber represents the first Leadville, the one with a proud history of tolerating many varieties of sin, maybe it really isn't so surprising that Chlouber has introduced a hate-crimes law.
But much as I want to support anything that Colorado for
Family Values opposes, a hate-crimes law is bad legislation
that truly does create a protected class.
Forget about lesbians, urnings, old people, immigrants, adherents of various religions and everybody else that might qualify as a victim under a hate crimes law, and look at it this way:
There are people who hate General Motors. They boycott its products, they denounce GM cars, they assail the company at every opportunity.
If one of these GM haters, motivated by his rancor, heaves a brick through the local Chevy dealer's showroom window, is that really a greater crime than if a vandal, motivated by mischief but not hatred, tosses a cobblestone through that plate glass?
Does poor, oppressed General Motors deserve extended legal protection just because some people hate it? In either case, the window is broken, and it isn't an accident.
It could be argued that the hate crime
here is
indeed the lesser crime, since it was an act of honest
passion, rather than mere random destruction. Or, in some
countries, the hate crime
would be the greater
offense, since it is a political crime, committed to
advance a cause, rather than a garden-variety
thrill-and-greed crime.
So there's one argument against establishing hate crimes. A hate crime is a political crime by a different name. Our system should punish people for what they do, not for what they think.
To investigate and prove, in court, that some act of violence was a hate crime, rather than a regular crime, requires more police and prosecutor resources. Wouldn't we all be better served if those limited resources were devoted to reducing all violent crime, rather than devoted to certain types of violent crime?
And finally, why should it be a lesser crime to assault
or harass me, a straight white guy, than to assault or
harass the gay couple down the street? Doesn't this make a
mockery of the notion of equal justice under
law
?
Look at the evidence cited in support of Chlouber's bill. A lesbian was shot with a pellet gun during a parade in Colorado Springs. Why should it be more illegal to shoot a marching lesbian than a marching tuba player? Or a gay man on Capitol Hill, beaten by thugs. Would it be any better if a straight man had been beaten by thugs?
Making offenses against certain citizens carry a greater punishment than offenses against other citizens says, in effect, that the first group has more rights.
We wouldn't stand for it if it were a greater offense to kidnap the banker's daughter than the town drunk's son. And that's what a hate crimes law does.
So, even though it was astonishing, even refreshing, to see Ken Chlouber get attacked for being too liberal, I'd prefer to see him working to repeal the current Colorado hate-crimes law, rather than adding more groups to the privileged list.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1995 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >